An infinite question: The paradox of representation in life & times of Michael K

Life & Times of Michael K aims to portray the violence of subjectivity and the negation upon which representation is predicated, pointing to the ethical importance of literature. This paper asserts that, in Coetzee's drive to represent the writer’s encounter with the other, he exercises the very same powers of negation and self-constituting subjectivity engaged with thematically in the novel. The paper suggests that the theme of Life & Times of Michael K – the necessary paradox of representation resulting from the irreducible nature of alterity – cannot be read simply as the final word on the novel’s ethics. The problematic meta-representational theme of the novel, and the ethical position of the work, is investigated with reference to the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Francois Lyotard.