ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how J. M. Coetzee deconstructs notions of care in Michael K. to establish a more intimate relationship between hospitality and security. In considering Michael K. and hospitality, Mike Marais argues that K's changed relationship to the farm provides the locus for the shift in K's attitude to possession in general. military convoys require of Michael that he show them his hands as part of their security protocols. For Paul Rayment, in Coetzee's novel Slow Man, the phrase "to take care of" may denote his angry declaration of self-autonomy and independence, but the euphemism is also used when his father kills the family dog with a shotgun. To think of a secure hospitality is, upon first approach, to care less for the self than for plain dirt, to think of it alongside a hospitable security perhaps first requires that we think care differently, enantiosemiotically.
