The Death Cry of a Hen: Elizabeth Costello at Humanism's Impasse

This article develops the ethico‐political figure of the “cry” as a way of attending to the suffering of those on the underside of humanism. The author begins from the diagnosis that humanism—a worldview centered on the irreducible dignity of the human being by virtue of their humanity—is at an “impasse,” in the way that Lauren Berlant uses the term. That is, the fantasies of a fully realized liberal humanism seem increasingly costly, while alternatives feel out of reach. Turning to J. M. Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello, specifically its chapters on the lives of animals, the author revamps work on the ethics of vulnerability to offer one way of negotiating this impasse without necessarily resolving it. Beginning from the moment when the novel's protagonist describes the effects of a hen's cry as she is put to death, the article posits the cry as the irruption of vulnerability that is proper neither to animality or humanity. Irreducible to voice or speech, the cry is a quivering movement that threatens the coherency of vocal capacity. Attention to it creates the possibility of becoming undone, of reorienting maps of suffering, and of entering into new relationships with those on the underside of hegemonic humanism.