쿳시의 『치욕』: 치욕이라는 은총

The human being and the animal being are already and always implicated. The attempt to divide them clearly is in itself violent to both of them. Although the animal has been sacrificed by way of constructing the concept of human subject, the concept is also continuously slid and transformed as it can't be fixed. The human being has denied and suppressed his own animality but the sacrifice of animality itself makes the life of human being sustainable. Accordingly, the Other in the novel of Coetzee is not only the human other but also the animal other. And the animal is not sacrificed for the human subject. Although the abyss between the human and the animal maintained by many philosophers has been produced by various traditional institutions and anthropocentric discourses, Coetzee reveals that it is not original any longer. In Disgrace, David Lurie, who was selfish and autonomous, starts to sympathize with the Other after he has experienced the disgraceful event and the fatal suffering. And he finally realizes that the human and the animal both share the mortality of death and are exposed to their vulnerability. By means of Lurie's animal becoming, Coetzee makes an transcendental trial to deconstruct a hard and fast line of demarcation between the human and the animal. Consequently, Lurie's transformation by self-recognition becomes the precondition for the ethical relation with the Other. His falling into disgrace has turned into a kind of grace to him as well as others.