Human Rights, Social Justice, and J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
In its engagement with the relative successes and failures of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace explicitly invokes the concept of human rights only to expose the many limitations of rights as vehicles for approaching social justice. Disgrace first juxtaposes its protagonist’s “rights of desire” with human rights, thereby exposing significant liabilities of rights talk. At the same time, it contemplates a communitarian mode of interpersonal solidarity as an alternative to the rights paradigm. However, in the end, its insistence upon the indeterminate status of justice is paradoxically what enables its ethical and political force.
Realism, Rape, and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace
Abstract In 1997-98, J. M. Coetzee elected to deliver the Tanner lectures at Princeton University in the form of a narrative in which Elizabeth Costello, an elderly Australian novelist delivers two lectures at a prestigious American university on the subject of the responsibilities of human beings toward animals. That narrative makes up the bulk of The Lives of Animals. In the absence of an explanation from Coetzee, we do not know why he chose that strategy of mediation, but it appears to function as a distancing device, a way of “insulat[ing] the warring 'ideas'” presented in the piece “against claims of authorship and authority” (Lives of Animals 79). The strategy perhaps originated in 1987, with Coetzee's expression of unease at being obliged when making a public address to speak a “language” other than his own–that is, to communicate in expository or discursive rather than narrative prose (“The Novel Today” 3). Storytelling, Coetzee declared then, is “another, an other mode of thinking” (4).
Economics of General-Purpose Assembly Robots
Summary A study of the comparative economics of various automatic assembly systems using general-purpose assembly robots is described. In the study, use is made of a “typical” candidate assembly whose profile is obtained from statistical analysis of actual products submitted by interested companies. It is shown that the choice of assembly system and the various parts presentation methods depends on three main factors, namely: the annual production volume per shift, the number of parts in the product and the equipment payback period.