From the Substantialist Subject to the Ethical Self: Examining the Problem Concerning Susan Barton's Substance in Coetzee's Foe through the Lens of Confucianist Reciprocity

• Published in: Research in African literatures Vol. 55; no. 1; pp. 180 - 193
• Main Authors: Shi, Juhong, Zhu, Gang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bloomington Indiana University Press 22.03.2025
• Subjects: Aristotle (384-322 BC); Attwell, David; Barton, Susan; Coetzee, J M (1940- ); Comparative analysis; Confucianism; Dialectics; Ethics; Interpersonal relations; Novels; Philosophy; Poetics; Reciprocity; Self concept; Subjectivity; Western philosophy; Writing; South Africa; United Kingdom
• ISSN: 0034-5210; 1527-2044; 1527-2044
• DOI: 10.2979/ral.00050

This paper approaches J. M. Coetzee's poetics of reciprocity in the comparative context of Western philosophy and Confucianist reciprocity by analyzing the problems encountered by Susan Barton, the protagonist of his novel Foe , as she navigates the quest for her substantial being. It contends that Coetzee intricately problematizes Susan's substance—an important philosophical concept that equals "being" or "ultimate self"—to delve into his reflections on interpersonal relations. Critiquing the Substantialist conception of subjectivity, which stresses individual determinacy and distinctness, Coetzee envisions a new self–other dynamic that echoes Confucianist reciprocity, which puts an asymmetrically higher demand on the self and maintains that becoming a human being means striving to fulfill one's interpersonal relations rather than being absolutely substantial. Approaching Coetzee's poetics of reciprocity in light of Confucianism offers us an opening through which an ethical self–other relation might be reconstructed to reverse the tension between the self and the other in Western philosophy.