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In this thesis, I argue that identity construction is a postal effect: it results from a transmission of some sort, received or sent. I examine three instances of postal effect. In a chapter on Jacques Derrida's "Envois," a collection of fragments presented as if transcribed from a one-way love letter correspondence, I explore the performative force of relayed address. Working from Derrida's account of the literary performative, I point out that the "Envois" letters are addressed to "you" in the singular, which implies an address reserved for a particular subject, but that the postal relay of the collection enacts a repetition of their address. For the reader of the book, this repetition has evocative force which I compare with the force of transference in the context of the psychoanalytic situation. In a second chapter on the "Envois" letters, I examine their haunting effect. The "Envois" letters have an I/we signature that intimates pluralities in the writing subject. I argue that this signature is the effect of a postal relay of another order: a phantom, which Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok define as a gap in the psychic topography of the subject caused by a secret unwittingly received along with a legacy. To a certain extent, the "Envois" letters are written by Plato's "in-voices." In a chapter on J. M. Coetzee's epistolary novel Age of Iron, I explore the gift effects of a posthumous letter. Age of Iron is an epistolary novel consisting exclusively of a single letter written by a dying South African woman, Mrs. Curren, to her daughter, a political objector who has emigrated to the United States. Writing her letter in the knowledge that her death is imminent, Mrs. Curren anticipates her daughter's mourning. Working with J. L. Austin's doctrine of illocutionary forces and Derrida's analysis of the gift event, I postulate two effects of Mrs. Curren's letter, one that annuls the gift in a circular return and another that surpasses this circuit with textual diss

This study investigates J.M. Coetzee's use of the female voice in In the Heart of the Country, Foe and Age of Iron, and is based on the premise that Coetzee's position as a male author using a female voice is important for readings of these novels. Although the implications of Coetzee's strategy are examined against the theoretical background of feminist or gender-related discourses, this study does not attempt to claim Coetzee for feminism, nor to prove him a misogynist. Instead, it focuses on the specific positional and narrative possibilities afforded by Coetzee's use of a female voice. Chapter One comments on the fact that Coetzee's strategy of "textual cross-dressing" has not been given much critical attention in the past, observing that research on South African literature has largely been limited to studies of racial and colonial problematics. This introductory chapter mentions that the different female narrators in Coetzee's novels articulate aspects of a discourse in crisis, resulting in profound ambivalence in their representation. Chapter Two observes that the female voices in Coetzee's novels invoke the textual illusion of a speaking/writing female body, and explains that this is useful in expressing aspects of what Coetzee refers to as the suffering body. Although Coetzee appropriates a female narrative position and employs certain subversive textual elements associated with "the feminine", attempts made by certain critics to label Coetzee's writing as ecriture feminine are rejected as highly problematic. Instead, the study contends that the femaleness of the narrators relative to "masculine" discursive power enables Coetzee to perform a critique of power "from a position of weakness". Furthermore, the presence of certain "feminine" elements within these narrators suggests Coetzee's affiliation with characteristics derided within phallocratic discourses, and becomes a strategic means of fictive self-positioning, of figuring his own position as a dissident. Chapter Three is a study of In the Heart of the Country, and proposes that Magda is represented as a typical nineteenth century hysteric. Her hystericized narrative is linked to certain avant-garde narratives, such as the nouveau roman and "New Wave" cinematography, both cited by Coetzee as influences on the novel. Furthermore, the novel provides insight into the ambiguous role of the hysteric and dramatises the position of the dissident: on a discursive level Magda's narrative is subversive, and yet in terms of social "reality" her revolt is ineffectual. Chapter Four addresses the issue of author-ity in Foe, and draws on Coetzee's affiliation with Susan Barton, the struggling authoress, whose narrative reveals the levels of power and authority operating within, novelistic discourse when she asks "Who ,is speaking me?". The study observes that Foe also performs a critique of the power-seeking project of liberal feminism, as the novel sets Susan's quest for authorship against the background of a more radical "otherness", that of Friday. Chapter Five asserts that Age of Iron exploits the ethical possibilities of a maternal discourse. Tracing parallels between images of motherhood in psychoanalytic feminism and in Age of Iron, this chapter argues that Kristeva's theory of abjection is relevant for a reading of Elizabeth Curren's position as a mother who has cancer. The childbirth metaphor as it appears in Age- of Iron becomes an alternative and profoundly ethical way of figuring the process of novel writing.

Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In its conversations with four texts by J.M. Coetzee – Age of Iron (1990), Life & Times of Michael K (1983), Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (2003) as well as the critical essays published in Doubling the Point, “The Poetics of Reciprocity” (1992) – this thesis will demonstrate the manner in which the singularities of each of these texts prompt, expand and challenge the framework that sustains its reading of Coetzee’s fiction. Whereas some critical methodologies seek to eliminate the characteristic indeterminacy of Coetzee’s fiction, imprisoning his novels in a contextual cage, this thesis demonstrates an allegiance to the primacy of the literary text together with a concern with the ethics of reading. The thesis proposes – in both content and form – an inductive ‘style of reading’ concerned with the continuous modification of its own strategies according to the ‘internal logics of the text’. I first encountered the term, ‘confinement’, in relation to Coetzee in an unpublished conference paper by Lucy Graham, “‘It is hard to keep out of the camps’: Areas of confinement in the fiction of J.M. Coetzee”. Graham’s paper focuses on the different camps, the ‘different circles of hell’, in Life & Times of Michael K especially, mentioning that ‘images of the camp resonate throughout Coetzee’s most recent fiction’. Although this thesis considers a variety of concrete and conceptual camps as well, it rather places predominant emphasis on the relationship between reader and literary text, which is examined in terms of two forms of delimitation, confinement and containment. This study identifies its style of reading as a ‘containment’ rather than a ‘confinement’. The term is intended to evoke an adaptable, constructive delineation of Coetzee’s fiction that involves a reciprocal relationship between reader and/or critic and text. As the thesis’s primary conceptual tool, one that I will argue is both solicited and thematised in Coetzee’s fiction, containment refers not only to a style of reading, but also to any reciprocal relationship, any mutual exchange. It applies to the relationship between genres (realism and metafiction) and ‘reality’ in Age of Iron; between text and reader in Life & Times of Michael K; between self and other in Elizabeth Costello; and between text and critic in “The Poetics of Reciprocity”. The notion of containment accepts the critical challenge posed by Coetzee’s fiction to engage with what Derek Attridge would call each ‘singular event’ or ‘act of literature’ on its own terms. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In die tesis se gesprek met vier tekste deur J.M. Coetzee – Age of Iron (1990), Life and Times of Michael K (1983), Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (2003) asook die kritiese tekste wat in Doubling the Point, “The Poetics of Reciprocity” (1992) gepubliseer is – sal dit toon hoe die sonderlinghede van elk van hierdie tekste die raamwerk wat my interpretasie van Coetzee se fiksie ondersteun, uitbrei en uitdaag. Waar sekere kritiese metodologieë probeer om die kenmerkende onbepaaldheid van Coetzee se fiksie te elimineer en sy romans in ’n konstekstuele hok te beperk, demonstreer hierdie tesis ’n getrouheid aan die voorrang wat die literêre teks moet geniet, insluitend ’n gemoeidheid met die etiek van lees. Die tesis stel, ten opsigte van sowel inhoud as vorm, ’n induktiewe ‘leesstyl’ voor wat gemoeid is met die deurentydse aanpassing van sy eie strategieë volgens ‘die interne logikas van die teks’. Ek het die term ‘beperking’ vir die eerste keer teëgekom in ’n ongepubliseerde referaat deur Lucy Graham, “‘It is hard to keep out of the camps’: Areas of confinement in the fiction of J.M. Coetzee”. Hierdie voordrag fokus op die onderskeie kampe in spesifiek Life & Times of Michael K. Graham wys daarop dat ‘die kamp-beeld in resente Coetzee-werke resoneer’. Alhoewel hierdie tesis ook variante van konkrete en konsepsuele kampe bekyk, gaan dit verder om by voorkeur die klem te laat val op die verhouding tussen leser en literêre teks. Dit word ondersoek in terme van twee vorme van afbakening en ontperking, naamlik beperking en inperking. Hierdie studie definieer sy eie leesstyl as ‘inperking’, in teenstelling tot ‘beperking’. Die bedoeling met die term is om `n aanpasbare, konstruktiewe afbakening van Coetzee se fiksie te ontlok wat ’n wedersydse verhouding tussen leser en/of kritikus en teks behels. As die tesis se primêre konsepsuele instrument, waarvan ek sal aanvoer dat dit in Coetzee se fiksie aangevra en getematiseer word, verwys ‘inperking’ nie net na leesstyl nie, maar ook na enige wederkerige verhouding, enige wedersydse uitruiling. Dit geld vir die verhouding tussen genres (realisme en metafiksie) en realiteit in Age of Iron; tussen teks en leser in Life and Times of Michael K; tussen die self en die ander in Elizabeth Costello; en tussen teks en kritikus in “The Poetics of Reciprocity”. Die begrip ‘inperking’ aanvaar die kritiese uitdaging wat deur Coetzee se fiksie gestel word om wat Derek Attridge elke ‘sonderlinge geleentheid’ of ‘literatuurdaad’ sou noem, op sy eie terme te benader.