Accommodating the Other: Derek Attridge on Literature, Ethics, and the Work of J M Coetzee

Abstract

This review essay outlines Derek Attridge’s argument for a form of critical attention to the literary text’s relationship to alterity. It then traces some of the ways in which Attridge sustains and exemplifies this argument for responsible reading in his exploration of J M Coetzee’s writing. While welcoming the substantial contribution which these two studies make to Coetzee criticism and the ongoing debate on the ethics of literature, the essay argues that Attridge fails to signpost adequately his use of, and divergence from, Maurice Blanchot’s ideas on literature and alterity, and that this oversight raises and leaves unanswered a number of questions on the literary work’s ability to accommodate the other.