Carrol Clarkson
Biographic Data
| ID | 4855515 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carrol Clarkson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carrol |
| FAMILY NAME | Clarkson |
| SIGNATURE | CLARKSON C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0650-1925 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Re-reading Dusklands
This paper has two points of departure: the publication of Dusklands in 1974, and the event of the Dusklands 50 conference held at the University of the Western Cape exactly 50 years later, on the 18th and 19th of April, 2024. We consider aspects of the publication history of the first edition, with special reference to the book’s dustcover. This leads us to a discussion of the importance of photographs in Dusklands, and to an appreciation of the…
Drawing the Line
Drawing the Line examines the ways in which cultural, political, and legal lines are imagined, drawn, crossed, erased, and redrawn in post-apartheid South Africa—through literary texts, artworks, and other forms of cultural production. Under the rubric of a philosophy of the limit, and with reference to a range of signifying acts and events, this book asks what it takes to recalibrate a sociopolitical scene, shifting perceptions of what counts an…
‘Wisselbare Woorde’
Carrol Clarkson’s chapter wrestles with the contentious question of Coetzee’s relation to the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa of the 1970s and early 1980s, which took its philosophical bearings from Frantz Fanon and found expression in the writings of Steve Biko. Clarkson focuses on the ways in which Coetzee departed from the ideas about writing and resistance that were circulating in his contemporary South Africa, particularly as ar…
The Intellectual Landscape in the Works of J. M. Coetzee
Arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of today, J. M. Coetzee is a deeply intellectual writer. Yet while just about everyone who comes to Coetzee's writing is aware that the visible superstructure of his works is moved from below by a vast substructure of ideas, we are still far from grasping Coetzee's intellectual allegiances as a whole. This book sets out to examine these allegiances in ways not attempted before, by bringi…
Coetzee’s Womanizing
The theme of womanizing has attracted much critical commentary â and speculation â in discussions of Coetzeeâ s writing. In this paper, however, I discuss an earlier, now obsolete meaning of â womanizingâ , not as a theme, but as a distinctive fictional device that opens up different ways of reading Coetzeeâ s women. Alongside the colloquial contemporary meaning of consorting (illicitly) with women, the Oxford English Dictionary expands on earlie…
J. M. Coetzee
Drawing the Line
"Drawing the Line" published on by Fordham University Press.
Writing and Reading
A Companion to the Works of J. M. Coetzee
New essays providing critical views of Coetzee's major works for the scholar and the general reader
Fences
Through its reading of Carl Schmitt's The Nomos of the Earth, Cornelia Vismann's essay, “Starting from Scratch: Concepts of Order in No Man's Land”, describes the “initial scene of the law”: “The primordial scene of the nomos opens with a drawing of a line in the soil. This very act initiates a specific concept of law, which derives order from the notion of space. The plough draws lines – furrows in the field – to mark the space of one's own. As …
J.M. Coetzee and the Limits of Language
In this article, with particular reference to Waiting for the Barbarians ([1980]2000) and Disgrace (1999), I explore the ways in which Coetzee's texts confront the difficulty of bringing meaningfully into linguistic range that which appears without precedent in given language. The irruption caused by the not-yet-said has the capacity to disturb the assumption that a meaningful language, recognised and shared by addressor and addressee, is being s…
J. M. Coetzee
"Clarkson pays sustained attention to the dynamic interaction between Coetzees fiction and his critical writing, exploring the Nobel prize-winner's participation in, and contribution to, contemporary literary-philosophical debates. The book engages with the most recent literary and philosophical responses to Coetzees work"--Provided by publisher
Photo Essay
When Welcome To Our Hillbrow came out in 2001, I asked Phaswane Mpe to sign my copy: “Welcome to our Heaven of fictions!” he wrote, alluding to our earlier joking conversation about the novel's Hea
Towards an Aesthetics of Law
In this seminal discussion of the relationship between law and literature, between the philosophers and the poets, Socrates and his interlocutors decide to banish the artists from their own intricately worked-out—if ironically imagined—just state. The main trouble is that ‘‘all the poets from Homer downwards have no grasp of truth but merely produce a superficial likeness of any subject they treat;’’ to the extent that ‘‘the artist knows little o…
J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading
Book Review| August 01 2007 J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event Derek Attridge Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005 xv + 225 pp., $47.50 (cloth), $19.00 (paper) Carrol Clarkson Carrol Clarkson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, A…
Who are ‘we’? Don’t make me laugh
Verbal and visual
This essay is a review of Ivan Vladislavić's recent book on the artist, Willem Boshoff. Vladislavić and Boshoff share a philosophical interest in the linguistic tensions between abstract meanings and material signs. Where Boshoff's sculptures and installations often appear as three-dimensional texts, the letters and words in Vladislavić's books have all the materiality of Duchamp's ready-mades. In his engagement with Boshoff's work, as much as in…
Derek Attridge in the event
The Singularity of Literature. Attridge, Derek, 2004. London & New York: Routledge. J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. {Literature in the Event}. Attridge, Derek, 2005. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu‐Natal Press
Locating Identity in Phaswane Mpe's Welcome To Our Hillbrow
A feature of contemporary South African fiction is that it explores the intricate complicities of personal, cultural and racial identities in terms of an uneasy relation to place—in both a physical and a figurative sense. Mpe's Welcome To Our Hillbrow poses a radical challenge to notions of ‘community’, of what constitutes ‘home’ in the same instant that the narrative is generated by these notions. The novel is written in the second person, which…
Done because we are too menny”
This essay suggests that Coetzee extends ethical questions raised in Hardy's Jude the Obscure – questions which have to do with the subject's relatedness to other sentient beings within the context of a natural world indifferent to the individual's plight or to contingent ethico‐cultural values. As much as he comes to recognise their ephemerality and contingency, Lurie upholds Western values: the fact that his ethical paradigm is supervenient upo…
Dickens and the Cratylus
Journal Article DICKENS AND THE CRATYLUS Get access Carrol Clarkson Carrol Clarkson PO Box 29231, Melville, 2109 Johannesburg, South Africa. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 39, Issue 1, January 1999, Pages 53–61, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/39.1.53 Published: 01 January 1999
Locating Identity in Phaswane Mpe's Welcome To Our Hillbrow
A feature of contemporary South African fiction is that it explores the intricate complicities of personal, cultural and racial identities in terms of an uneasy relation to place—in both a physical and a figurative sense. Mpe's Welcome To Our Hillbrow poses a radical challenge to notions of ‘community’, of what constitutes ‘home’ in the same instant that the narrative is generated by these notions. The novel is written in the second person, which…
Dickens and the Cratylus
Journal Article DICKENS AND THE CRATYLUS Get access Carrol Clarkson Carrol Clarkson PO Box 29231, Melville, 2109 Johannesburg, South Africa. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 39, Issue 1, January 1999, Pages 53–61, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/39.1.53 Published: 01 January 1999
J. M. Coetzee
Photo Essay
When Welcome To Our Hillbrow came out in 2001, I asked Phaswane Mpe to sign my copy: “Welcome to our Heaven of fictions!” he wrote, alluding to our earlier joking conversation about the novel's Hea
Who are ‘we’? Don’t make me laugh
Verbal and visual
This essay is a review of Ivan Vladislavić's recent book on the artist, Willem Boshoff. Vladislavić and Boshoff share a philosophical interest in the linguistic tensions between abstract meanings and material signs. Where Boshoff's sculptures and installations often appear as three-dimensional texts, the letters and words in Vladislavić's books have all the materiality of Duchamp's ready-mades. In his engagement with Boshoff's work, as much as in…
Dickens and the Cratylus
Journal Article DICKENS AND THE CRATYLUS Get access Carrol Clarkson Carrol Clarkson PO Box 29231, Melville, 2109 Johannesburg, South Africa. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 39, Issue 1, January 1999, Pages 53–61, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/39.1.53 Published: 01 January 1999
Done because we are too menny”
This essay suggests that Coetzee extends ethical questions raised in Hardy's Jude the Obscure – questions which have to do with the subject's relatedness to other sentient beings within the context of a natural world indifferent to the individual's plight or to contingent ethico‐cultural values. As much as he comes to recognise their ephemerality and contingency, Lurie upholds Western values: the fact that his ethical paradigm is supervenient upo…
Derek Attridge in the event
The Singularity of Literature. Attridge, Derek, 2004. London & New York: Routledge. J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. {Literature in the Event}. Attridge, Derek, 2005. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu‐Natal Press
Locating Identity in Phaswane Mpe's Welcome To Our Hillbrow
A feature of contemporary South African fiction is that it explores the intricate complicities of personal, cultural and racial identities in terms of an uneasy relation to place—in both a physical and a figurative sense. Mpe's Welcome To Our Hillbrow poses a radical challenge to notions of ‘community’, of what constitutes ‘home’ in the same instant that the narrative is generated by these notions. The novel is written in the second person, which…
Verbal and visual
This essay is a review of Ivan Vladislavić's recent book on the artist, Willem Boshoff. Vladislavić and Boshoff share a philosophical interest in the linguistic tensions between abstract meanings and material signs. Where Boshoff's sculptures and installations often appear as three-dimensional texts, the letters and words in Vladislavić's books have all the materiality of Duchamp's ready-mades. In his engagement with Boshoff's work, as much as in…
J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading
Book Review| August 01 2007 J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event Derek Attridge Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2005 xv + 225 pp., $47.50 (cloth), $19.00 (paper) Carrol Clarkson Carrol Clarkson Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, A…
Who are ‘we’? Don’t make me laugh
Towards an Aesthetics of Law
In this seminal discussion of the relationship between law and literature, between the philosophers and the poets, Socrates and his interlocutors decide to banish the artists from their own intricately worked-out—if ironically imagined—just state. The main trouble is that ‘‘all the poets from Homer downwards have no grasp of truth but merely produce a superficial likeness of any subject they treat;’’ to the extent that ‘‘the artist knows little o…
J.M. Coetzee and the Limits of Language
In this article, with particular reference to Waiting for the Barbarians ([1980]2000) and Disgrace (1999), I explore the ways in which Coetzee's texts confront the difficulty of bringing meaningfully into linguistic range that which appears without precedent in given language. The irruption caused by the not-yet-said has the capacity to disturb the assumption that a meaningful language, recognised and shared by addressor and addressee, is being s…
J. M. Coetzee
"Clarkson pays sustained attention to the dynamic interaction between Coetzees fiction and his critical writing, exploring the Nobel prize-winner's participation in, and contribution to, contemporary literary-philosophical debates. The book engages with the most recent literary and philosophical responses to Coetzees work"--Provided by publisher
Photo Essay
When Welcome To Our Hillbrow came out in 2001, I asked Phaswane Mpe to sign my copy: “Welcome to our Heaven of fictions!” he wrote, alluding to our earlier joking conversation about the novel's Hea
Fences
Through its reading of Carl Schmitt's The Nomos of the Earth, Cornelia Vismann's essay, “Starting from Scratch: Concepts of Order in No Man's Land”, describes the “initial scene of the law”: “The primordial scene of the nomos opens with a drawing of a line in the soil. This very act initiates a specific concept of law, which derives order from the notion of space. The plough draws lines – furrows in the field – to mark the space of one's own. As …
A Companion to the Works of J. M. Coetzee
New essays providing critical views of Coetzee's major works for the scholar and the general reader
Drawing the Line
"Drawing the Line" published on by Fordham University Press.
Writing and Reading
J. M. Coetzee
‘Wisselbare Woorde’
Carrol Clarkson’s chapter wrestles with the contentious question of Coetzee’s relation to the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa of the 1970s and early 1980s, which took its philosophical bearings from Frantz Fanon and found expression in the writings of Steve Biko. Clarkson focuses on the ways in which Coetzee departed from the ideas about writing and resistance that were circulating in his contemporary South Africa, particularly as ar…
The Intellectual Landscape in the Works of J. M. Coetzee
Arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of today, J. M. Coetzee is a deeply intellectual writer. Yet while just about everyone who comes to Coetzee's writing is aware that the visible superstructure of his works is moved from below by a vast substructure of ideas, we are still far from grasping Coetzee's intellectual allegiances as a whole. This book sets out to examine these allegiances in ways not attempted before, by bringi…
Coetzee’s Womanizing
The theme of womanizing has attracted much critical commentary â and speculation â in discussions of Coetzeeâ s writing. In this paper, however, I discuss an earlier, now obsolete meaning of â womanizingâ , not as a theme, but as a distinctive fictional device that opens up different ways of reading Coetzeeâ s women. Alongside the colloquial contemporary meaning of consorting (illicitly) with women, the Oxford English Dictionary expands on earlie…
Drawing the Line
Drawing the Line examines the ways in which cultural, political, and legal lines are imagined, drawn, crossed, erased, and redrawn in post-apartheid South Africa—through literary texts, artworks, and other forms of cultural production. Under the rubric of a philosophy of the limit, and with reference to a range of signifying acts and events, this book asks what it takes to recalibrate a sociopolitical scene, shifting perceptions of what counts an…
Re-reading Dusklands
This paper has two points of departure: the publication of Dusklands in 1974, and the event of the Dusklands 50 conference held at the University of the Western Cape exactly 50 years later, on the 18th and 19th of April, 2024. We consider aspects of the publication history of the first edition, with special reference to the book’s dustcover. This leads us to a discussion of the importance of photographs in Dusklands, and to an appreciation of the…
South African History and Culture (16 works) · Art (14 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Aesthetics (10 works) · Linguistics (9 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · History (7 works)