Lucy calls into doubt the value of all of the specifically European modes of artistic or linguistic expression that are the touchstones not only of David's career, but his worldview: she jokes with him that he must think her activities - running a boarding kennel and growing produce for a farmers' market - worthless, that he must think she 'ought to be painting still lives' or learning Russian (p. 74). Where David stresses the apparent rights of individual desire, or self-expression, of a concern with individual consciousness and its apprehension of the sublime, Lucy emphasizes individual responsibility and responsibility to others - including non-human others 

(p 28 of Andrew Van Der Vlies' J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Continuum 2010)