2.1 ESPONDILITIS ANQUILOSANTE
2.1. c Caracteristicas clínicas
Her second priority concerns having the appropriate weather to grow food and the third concerns our now familiar question of the effects of solitude. Here, the bestial nature of the solitary human is described in terms of clothing and diet and reminds us of our real-life Frenchman, naked and eating raw tortoise, stranded on Mauritius. We note that the normally human-securing powers of carnivorous consumption are suspended when the flesh in question is uncooked. This follows the distinction underlined in the title of Claude Levi-Strauss’ The Raw
and the Cooked123 where the cooking of animal flesh is considered a “cultural” act, as opposed
to the “natural” eating of raw meat. Raw flesh remains on the side of nature, stripped of its powers to differentiate between humans and animals and hence the castaway is dehumanised. Not only does Barton eat like a dog, but defecates like one, that is, in the open, in plain view, with no apparent sense of shame. This lack of shame is also evident in that her only clothing (a petticoat) is “in tatters” (35). In this way, the narrative gestures towards one of Derrida’s most important interventions in terms of the construction of the human animal. Derrida points out that shame is a quality traditionally reserved for humans. He connects this sense of shame with nudity whereby on being revealed in all its nakedness, the human animal is said to feel shame which the nonhuman animal does not experience. Indicating the somewhat paradoxical nature of this thought, he notes that only humans can be said to be naked. Animals “wouldn’t be naked because they are naked.”124 Barton has already established her relative nakedness and this short section of text thus directs us to some of the fundamental elements which make a human human. We begin to see not only how these essential elements are supplementary to the human, but also how rapidly and easily they can fall away. Barton’s experiences on the island, therefore, come to reflect the fears of critics like Watt and establish for the reader the rather delicate nature of the human animal who is, it would seem, only ever one shipwreck away from the dehumanising influence of the animal simile. In this sense, Coetzee’s novel has the opposite effect of Defoe’s. Rather than presenting the human as a resourceful animal, capable of using rationality to sustain itself, Foe presents the fragility of the human who is more like a dog than he would care to acknowledge.
122
Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign, 2011, 2:55.
123
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked: An Introduction to the Science of Mythology, trans. Doreen Weightman and John Weightman (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).
124
Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, 5.
In his investigation of dogs in Coetzee’s writing, Louis Tremaine notes a critical tendency to treat the dogs in Disgrace as “the dog”—a sign that “stands in for something other than itself.”125 Tremaine persuasively argues instead that David Lurie’s encounters with dogs allow him to come to terms with his “embodied soul,” by recognising the fact of his own animal body. The article suggests that part of Coetzee’s wider project is to grapple with the shame of death where the solution comes in acknowledging the words of Lucy, Lurie’s daughter, that “there is no higher life. This is the only life there is. Which we share with the animals.”126 Tremaine finds, therefore, something powerfully affirmative in the suggestion that Lucy will have to start her life again, from ground level, “like a dog.” With this in mind, we suspect that Coetzee’s enterprise is more radical than merely pointing out the fragility of the human. Barton’s discourse, which, as we shall see, is articulated around an absolute human-animal division, is markedly anthropocentric where Coetzee is interested in noting the continuities between humans and their nonhuman others. Barton, in her naivety as a novice writer, exposes the anthropocentric tendencies of narrative which reduces nonhuman animals to mere similes and reproduces assumptions of human superiority over nonhumans. There is a powerful sense in which writing itself is implicated in producing her worries of becoming animal-like. We should recall that her island narrative is written after she has left the island and travelled to London. Barton can look back on her island existence and detect the animal-like aspects of her life. We pick up on these threads later, but for now, I would like to turn to Cruso, who neither wishes to leave the island, nor writes. Here we find an alternative and compelling reading of the castaway. Barton is the newcomer to the island. She remains resolutely not-at-home during her stay and yearns to leave. She promotes a traditional humanism of the sort upheld by Watt and validated in Robinson Crusoe. Cruso, by contrast, claims to have been living there for fifteen years and has no desire to return to Europe. His adoption of island life rejects a Barton-esque view of isolation. He maintains what one could call his human dignity, but without using tools in a Robinsonian manner. He asserts to Barton that “We have a roof over our heads, made without saw or axe. We sleep, we eat, we live. We have no need of tools” (32). This underlines the difference in outlook between Coetzee’s and Defoe’s islanders. Where Crusoe makes use of tools from his wrecked ship to construct all manner of structures for comfort, safety and animal husbandry, Cruso makes little attempt at any of these. So while the former works tirelessly to exert his influence on the island and to replicate his European lifestyle, the latter develops the mentality of a castaway, telling Barton “I ask you to remember, not every man who bears the mark of the castaway is a castaway at heart” (33).
125
Louis Tremaine, “The Embodied Soul: Animal Being in the Work of J. M. Coetzee,” Contemporary
Literature 44, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 605.
126
Quoted in ibid., 610.
Cruso the castaway may not be very friendly, but he is not mad, bestial or savage. As a castaway, he demonstrates how a human can remain, outside even of the forces of traditional humanism. The mark of the castaway is surely the mark of the exiled Cain. Cruso has eschewed Abel’s role as producer of “livestock,” and is instead a would-be Cain, a farmer of crops. Every day, Cruso toils away in the construction of terraces and walls, creating flat areas of land which he is preparing for agricultural use. Having nothing to plant, however, the terraces remain empty. Cruso states that “Clearing ground and piling stones is little enough, but it is better than sitting in idleness” (33). Barton later points the reader to consider how the text subtly
reconfigures Genesis. She asks the non-responsive Friday: