'엘리자베스 코스텔로'에 나타난 철학적 문제의식

Philosophical Quest for Binary Oppositions in Elizabeth Costello - Deconstructing Logocentrism

When the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee published Elizabeth Costello, some critics responded with anger and derision to this fiction, claiming it is not a novel but an antinovel. Coetzee in this text probes into and deconstructs what we call “logocentrism” indicating a traditional preference in Western thought for logos which has came to denote an ultimate principle of truth after Plato’s binary system of philosophy. Logocentrism has resulted in the subservient position of writing to speech, and mythos to logos. Historically, Plato replaced mythos with logos, whereas Coetzee pinpoints the limitation of rational thought of the heritage of Platonic philosophy, critiquing and deconstructing the relationship between rational thought(logos) and sympathy(mythos). This paper aims to interrogate and destabilize discrete binary oppositions of Platonic logocentrism in terms of a deconstructive term, ‘supplement’ that cannot be thought under the concept of ontology. Coetzee replaces the systems of oppression, “the great Western discourse” with sympathy “that allows us to share at times the being of another.” Sympathy is none other than a supplement as the undecidable structure. Therefore reason and sympathy exist as supplementary.