Cover
Half-title Page
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
The child in Coetzee: A story waiting to be told
Towards a poetics of the child
From Levinas and Derrida to Agamben and Arendt
Writing and the child
The child as the object of writerly desire
The writer as child
Conceptions of the child
'The child'
a fluid concept
The child and the fully human
A figure of openness and possibility
Outline
1 The story of the (un)romantic child: Innocence, truth, and first fictions of the self
Fragments of childhoods

(Un)romantic children
Navigating fictions
Moments of openness
Authentic encounters: From self to other
2 Ethics of the not-so-other child
The savage-as-child-as-self
Children of iron
Ethics of indeterminacy
3 The child between past and future
Natality and the event
Worrying about the child
Getting beyond death
Amor mundi and transmissibility
The interregnum, freedom, and writing
Pedagogy and play
From natality to infancy
4 Childish behaviour: The poetics of study
From waiting to 'pressing on'
The incessant shuttling of study

Grasping the potentialities of the present
Impotentiality and the curious state of infancy
Embracing uncertainty
From childish to childlike
5 The redemptive nonposition of infancy
The burdensome search for truth
Infancy and language as such
Being like a child: 'The revocation of every vocation'
Infancy and ethics
Writing and redemption
Coda
References
Index
Copyright Page