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Chapter 7 - The Threshold of Vision

The Animal Gaze in Beckett, Sebald and Coetzee

from Part II - On Literary History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2024

Peter Boxall
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

What is the threshold that intervenes between one mind and another, across which the act of looking takes place?

This essay addresses this question, in relation to the work of Samuel Beckett, W. G. Sebald and J. M. Coetzee. All three writers are centrally concerned with what I here call the ‘threshold of vision’ – and for all three writers, to think this threshold requires an act of ethical imagination. This is the case for the exchange of any look between one consciousness and another; but for all three writers this exchange becomes particularly charged when it is shared between human and animal. The essay reads the act of looking through this relation between human and nonhuman, to produce a critical account of the politics of shared life, as this exceeds our given taxonomies for imagining consciousness.

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Chapter
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The Possibility of Literature
The Novel and the Politics of Form
, pp. 149 - 168
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • The Threshold of Vision
  • Peter Boxall, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Possibility of Literature
  • Online publication: 10 October 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009314305.010
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  • The Threshold of Vision
  • Peter Boxall, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Possibility of Literature
  • Online publication: 10 October 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009314305.010
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Threshold of Vision
  • Peter Boxall, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Possibility of Literature
  • Online publication: 10 October 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009314305.010
Available formats
×