Becomings in J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians and José Saramago's Blindness

What is it about?

“Becoming-animal” is a term used by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their work, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia which at times can designate a movement towards denigration. With a “becoming,” a threshold is, invariably, crossed and the boundaries that have existed between the animal and the human become blurred. Moreover, “becoming” challenges an existing order. Deleuze and Guattari suggest that at times, it could function as a source of creativity. In this paper, I propose to show otherwise. This paper examines the process of “becoming-animal” in J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, and José Saramago’s novel, Blindness, and how this process invariably is one of degradation. This paper will also be discussing the issue of blindness and how in Saramago’s novel it functions as the catalyst behind the becoming.

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