Human identity and animal ethics in J.M. Coetzee’s The lives of animals

Abstract

The article aims to position JM Coetzee’s The lives of animals within the animal rights debate and assess both his use of and his failure to use key philosophical texts in the animal rights movement. This task is complicated by his adoption of the controversial persona, Elizabeth Costello, who paradoxically uses reason to attack reason and continuously evokes the Holocaust analogy. The paper attempts to understand her views in relation to the leading animal rights philosophers, Peter Singer and Tom Regan, but also emphasizes her departure from their respectively utilitarian and rights-based positions, offsetting these against the positions of Mary Midgley, deep ecology, ecofeminism and the virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre. The paper concludes with a consideration of views expressed by Coetzee in an interview and a speech.