Abstract
This thesis examines the relation between the human and the non-human in two novels by J. M. Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians and Life & Times of Michael K. The thesis focuses in particular on the way that the novels engage with place in their thematization of human-nature relations. Although some critics have recognized the ecocritical elements inherent in the novels, the element of place has mostly been discussed in its political relevance, in particular in the postcolonial context. Its ecocritical potential, by contrast, has been largely overlooked. This thesis will redress this gap in existing criticism by examining how the element of place in the novels encompass a conceptualisation of both the human and the non-human and the relation between these two concepts. Examining the human-nature relation from the stance of postcolonial ecocriticism, the thesis examines how the novels reposition the human within the realm of the non-human by focusing on the connection between the human and physical place in terms of relationality and embodiedness. This thesis essentially argues that the novels both illustrate traditional conceptualisations of the idea of the human and then go on to disturb the givenness of the human-centred perspective, offering a postanthropocentric reconceptualization of the human in relation to nature.