J M Coetzee’s Disgrace deals with race and power in contemporary, post-colonial South Africa. This prize-winning novel is written after the country's first all-race elections, in 1994. It has therefore most often been analyzed as a representative for the writing of the new South Africa, where the social problems relating binary oppositions such as black – white, native – immigrant, powerless – powerful, are stressed. More specifically the shift of power within the above mentioned pairs is in focus. This is also the case for this essay, but instead of analyzing the realistic elements in the book it will examine the imaginary complexity of the opera Byron in Italy, which is created by the protagonist, David Lurie. This essay aims to widen the concept of “native” regarding post-colonial theory by looking at the peculiarity of Lurie’s situation; him being a representative of the white population in South Africa. By using post-colonial theory this essay aims at showing that Lurie can be seen as a white native, and that his process of writing the opera can be seen as symbolizing the evolutionary phases a colonized nation goes through in order to develop a national culture, as described by Franz Fanon.

<p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att identifiera och analysera maktrelationerna i J. M. Coetzees roman Disgrace. Främst analyseras genusrelationerna och då i huvudsak i anslutning till huvudkarktären David Lurie. Det har också lagts stor vikt vid hur svarta och vita förhåller sig till varandra.</p><p>Studien har visat att maktrelationerna mellan romanens karaktärer både sam- och motverkar, samt är föränderliga. Huvudkaraktären besitter många betydelsefulla maktaspekter och har därför möjlighet att utnyttja den unga studenten Melanie sexuellt. Paradoxalt är detta också orsaken till att hon kan anmäla detta, då hennes underläge är så totalt att anmälan utan problem kan ses som befogad.</p><p>Mellan karaktären Petrus och huvudkaraktärens dotter Lucy är maktförhållandet mer komplext då Lucy är vit och kvinna, medan Petrus är svart och man. Deras maktrelation går från Lucys fördel – då de förhåller sig som svart och vit till varandra – till Petrus fördel – som man och kvinna. Detta sker genom deras egna sociala genuskonstruktioner som i sin tur tar sin näring i Lucys fysiska upplevelser: både våldtäkten och graviditeten som den orsakar.</p>

Syftet med uppsatsen är att identifiera och analysera maktrelationerna i J. M. Coetzees roman Disgrace. Främst analyseras genusrelationerna och då i huvudsak i anslutning till huvudkarktären David Lurie. Det har också lagts stor vikt vid hur svarta och vita förhåller sig till varandra. Studien har visat att maktrelationerna mellan romanens karaktärer både sam- och motverkar, samt är föränderliga. Huvudkaraktären besitter många betydelsefulla maktaspekter och har därför möjlighet att utnyttja den unga studenten Melanie sexuellt. Paradoxalt är detta också orsaken till att hon kan anmäla detta, då hennes underläge är så totalt att anmälan utan problem kan ses som befogad. Mellan karaktären Petrus och huvudkaraktärens dotter Lucy är maktförhållandet mer komplext då Lucy är vit och kvinna, medan Petrus är svart och man. Deras maktrelation går från Lucys fördel – då de förhåller sig som svart och vit till varandra – till Petrus fördel – som man och kvinna. Detta sker genom deras egna sociala genuskonstruktioner som i sin tur tar sin näring i Lucys fysiska upplevelser: både våldtäkten och graviditeten som den orsakar.

This essay deals with sexual power abuse in J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace. The essay focuses on the two characters David and Petrus and their way of acting. The question asked is simply: how do these two men use women to gain their power? And how do they deal with women? The result can be summarized in the following way: at the beginning the male characters tear women apart till they become totally insecure and thus they can control them completely. Petrus remains this way but as time goes by, David’s thoughts of women gradually changes. The essay also focuses on how David and Petrus shift in power. David, who started out as strong, becomes weak, and Petrus develops in the opposite direction and I am going to argue that this is a result of their relations to women. The essay uses a gender perspective and it can be considered a guide to the sexual abuse in Disgrace.

<p>In this essay I look at J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace from a rather different perspective. I argue that, despite his less than heroic attributes, David Lurie is the protagonist of an adventure and follows Joseph Campbell’s pattern of the hero’s ditto. Furthermore, the goal of David Lurie’s journey lies in self-realization and self-reinvention, which is not typical for the hero’s journey. The Ultimate Boon is usually something else but different times call for different heroes. In J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading, Derek Attridge suggests that David Lurie grows on the reader throughout the novel and is a better person at the end (Attridge 183). This indicates that David Lurie goes through a process personally that changes him in a positive direction. Besides Campbell’s theory, the theories of Propp and Stanford are presented and put to good use as theoretical background. Since this essay deals with both narratology and structuralism I provide short explanations of these two branches of literature criticism as presented in Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory. I then discuss relevant passages from Disgrace in connection with the different stages of the hero’s journey as described by Campbell. I do so in the order they are presented in Campbell’s book.</p>

According to postcolonial theory, postcolonial literature tends to depict non-Westerners – the native Other – as a homogenous mass, portrayed as carrying all the dark human traits. The Other is often represented as, for instance, being exotic, violent, hostile and mysterious, and either stands in opposition to, or is portrayed as being completely different from the Westerner. With postcolonial theory as a background, this study is a close-reading analysis and comparison of Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942), which takes place in a colonial Algeria, and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), which is set in postcolonial South Africa. The novels have been analysed in terms of representation of the Other, as well as the power relations and hierarchy between Westerners and natives, in order to see if these aspects are portrayed differently due to the fact that one novel is written pre-independence and the other post-independence. The results show that the representation of the Other is in accordance with postcolonial theory, in both novels. The natives are exoticised, portrayed as violent and mysterious in a hostile manner, and the plot is viewed from the perspective of the Western, white male protagonist. However, the power relations differ; in The Stranger, the Westerners are definitely superior, whereas in Disgrace, some of the characters still consider themselves to be superior, but their power has declined – the natives strike back, leaving the white population with a choice: to comply to the new order, or to find themselves in a state of disgrace.

Denne mastergraden er en intertekstuell og fortelleteknisk analyse av J. M. Coetzees Disgrace. Romanen forholder seg nært til et Sør-Afrika kort tid etter oppløsningen av apartheid. Den har blitt lest realistisk, og har blitt kraftig kritisert for å fremstille en pågående rasisme i Sør-Afrika. Denne avhandlingen leser romanen som en postmoderne tekst og bruker Gerrard Genette sine teorier om transtekstualitet for å vise hvor omfattende leken med litteratur er i Disgrace.

While many scholarships of the film adaptation of Disgrace have championed the fidelity rhetoric of the film with respect to J.M. Coetzee's novel, and in so doing, have advocated the axiomatic hierarchy of literature over cinema, this dissertation challenges the fidelity discourse about the film and proposes new tropes for adaptation criticism beyond the classical paradigm. Central to the thesis is the argument that a re-examination of Steve Jacobs's feature film Disgrace unveils the inconsistency and inadequacy of the fidelity rhetoric as a language for adaptation criticism, positions the film as an independent genre with its specificity and poeticity, and allows for an intertextual dialogue with other post-apartheid South African and postcolonial African cinematic productions as a means of promoting adaptation criticism beyond the fidelity model. While cementing the film's independent status vis-à-vis the novel, the intertextual critique also allows for a rewriting of Jacobs's Disgrace that addresses its shortcomings and controversies. Hence, drawing upon structural narratologists such as Gerard Genette, postcolonial scholars such as Gayatri Spivak and Frantz Fanon, and adaptation critics including Linda Hutcheon, Robert Stam, Alexie Tcheuyap, and Lindiwe Dovey, the dissertation explores at a time formal and thematic aesthetics of the film adaptation to diversify its critical avenues not only but also to bridge epistemological gaps left by previous studies which are limited to thematic hermeneutics.

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