Disability and the Ethics of Care in J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This essay interrogates the interrelationship between bodily disability and the ethics of care in J. M. Coetzee’s novel Slow Man . It argues that disability emerges as an ethically charged subject, an engagement with the ethics of care. The discussion shows that the novel consists of acts of giving and, thus, receiving care. It is argued that the novel employs and interrogates the language of care and the nuanced meanings of the term. We assert a theme elaborated in Coetzee’s earlier fictions that ethics and politics are inseparable and that ethics is the necessary starting point for political commitment in fiction. While the interplay between ethics and politics in Coetzee’s apartheid fictions revolves mainly around apartheid politics, the ethics of care interrogated in Slow Man reveal a broader realm of relevance in the post-apartheid fictions that includes humans in general. In Coetzee’s vision, to suffer, i.e. to need care or to be willing to care for others, is part of being human. Key words: Coetzee; Ethics; Care; Slow Man ; Disability; Politics; (post)Apartheid fiction Resume Ce texte interroge les liens entre le handicape physique et les soins d'ethique du roman de l’homme lent de JM Coetzee. Il soutient que le handicape apparait comme un sujet ethique chargee, un engagement avec les soins d'ethique. La discussion montre que le roman consiste en des actes de donner et de recevoir ainsi des soins. Il est soutenu que le roman emploie et interroge la langue de soins et les significations nuancees avec les termes. Nous affirmons un theme elabore dans les fictions anterieures Coetzee que l'ethique et la politique sont indissociables et que l'ethique est le point de depart necessaire pour l'engagement politique dans la fiction. Alors que l'interaction entre ethique et politique d'apartheid dans les fictions de Coetzee tourne principalement autour de la politique d'apartheid, l'ethique des soins interroge en homme lent revelent un large domaine de pertinence dans les fictions post-apartheid qui comprend les humains en general. Dans la vision de Coetzee, de souffrir, c'est a dire avoir besoin de soins ou d'etre dispose a prendre soin des autres, fait partie de l'etre humain. Mots cles: Coetzee; Ethique; Soins; Homme lent; Handicape; Politique; Fiction d'apartheid (post)
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.011 | 0.027 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".