The Disabled Body: Coetzee's Slow Man and Narration, Identity and Autonomy

Abstract

Slow Man (2005), J. M. Coetzee forges a sophisticated intertwining of disability, entrapment, and selfhood, particularly through the character of Paul Rayment, whose existence undergoes radical transformation as a consequence of severe injury. This paper studies the disability of the protagonist not as a field of deficits, but as a locus of perpetual restructuring of the negotiation of identity and freedom. The disability studies framework, in conjunction with the theory of representation, foregrounds the argument that Coetzee refuses to entertain rehabilitation narratives that tie the notions of recovery and social isomorphism. Rather, in Slow Man, the entrapment, idleness, and exposure of enslavement destabilize the critical postulates of equality and self-determination. The self-referentiality and the obtrusive voice of the author invite the reader to reflect upon literature the problems of the dual and, often, paradoxical, absence in power and representation, and, simultaneously, the presence in power and self-determination of the disabled and the disabled. This paper discusses how Slow Man engages with critical ableism by showing disability not as a temporary absence of the ideal body, but a reminder of our humanity configured with the social, the narrative, and the moral.