Love and Desire in Coetzee’s Disgraceand Waiting for the Barbarians: A Levinasian Approach

This paper exploresthe possibility of presenting a philosophical analysis of two novels,Waiting for the Barbariansand Disgrace, by J.M.Coetzee, through a Levinasian ethical perspective. Levinas’s philosophyis premised on the ethical responsibility of the self for the other. Redefining philosophy as the wisdom of love, Levinas embarks upon a revisionary approach to re-defining concepts such as love, desire, and responsibility that dominate and mediate the relationship between the self and the other. These reconfigured terms accommodate Levinas’s distinctive ethical standpoint, onethatis geared towards valorizing the other over the self. The novels examined in this article similarly manifest a tendency to prioritize the other in its destitutionand vulnerability. My discussion of Waiting for the Barbarianswill be built around the relationship between the Magistrate and the Barbariangirl. I contend that their non-carnal relationship can be interpretedin terms of a transcendental andnon-ontological conception of desire.As such, desire becomes an obsession which cannot be shaken off. Desire of this kind liberates the self from egoism. In DisgraceI will explore the concept of love as maternity. Lucy’s refusal to abort her pregnancy reverberates with Levinas’s argument about maternal love as a self-effacing form of devotion. In both novels the question of the ethical body anditsvulnerability will also be examined. The aim is to show how insatiable desire andmaternal love can be manifestations oftheethical responsibility expounded by Levinas