J.M. Coetzee’s novels are suffused with a pervasive, though often oblique, Holocaust awareness. Direct references to the event and to the historical era to which it belongs, subtle stylistic and thematic echoes of Holocaust writing, and the recurrent mobilization of Holocaust imagery in Coetzee’s novels all contribute to suggest the significance of the event to the author’s work and thought. Providing Coetzee with a lens through which to view the contemporary situation, both local and global, the Holocaust offers Coetzee a means by which difficult and complex questions of ethics and historiographical truth may be approached. Above all, the Holocaust and its representation contribute to Coetzee’s exploration of the dilemmas of translating the traumatic lived experience of atrocity – including, but not limited to, life in apartheid South Africa – into narrative form. Taken as a whole, Coetzee’s oeuvre initially anticipates and later responds to, in characteristically oblique fashion, the narrative project(s) facing post-apartheid South Africa as the newly-democratic nation sought to make sense of its past through a variety of means, the most important of which was the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Implicitly challenging the TRC’s findings as well as its narrative assumptions, the Coetzean oeuvre accordingly invites being read as offering a continuous and evolving counter-narrative to the TRC and its construction of a narrative of the apartheid past for the post-apartheid nation. In utilizing the Holocaust, its representations, and the reception thereof to frame his response to apartheid, Coetzee implicates both in a critique of the Western model of modernity, suggesting, in the process, the importance of reconfiguring modernity in a more ethical shape. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-29 12:15:58.377

This thesis examines how J.M. Coetzee's engagement with Christian thinkers and concepts has shaped his fiction. Through a series of close readings, I show how Coetzee, who does not identify as a Christian, reworks and reimagines concepts from key Christian interlocutors across his writings. Each close reading is informed by a consideration of what Coetzee had himself been reading during the writing process, based on evidence in interviews, essays, monographs, and archival materials. Attending to Coetzee's reading and writing, together, illuminates the distinctively self-conscious nature of his engagement with Christianity. Whereas current Coetzee criticism has given attention to specific Christian themes and lexical choices in his fiction, this thesis demonstrates that Coetzee's engagement with Christianity is more profound and pervasive than has been credited hitherto. In addition to the vast body of allusion to Scripture in his writings, Christian thinkers have in fact played a major role in his innovative approach to the novel, a genre predominantly forged in Christian contexts, and in his handling of narrative more generally. Through its explication of Coetzee's extensive dialogue with Christian thinking, and with the Bible, across the full span of his career, this thesis seeks to describe the nuanced and diverse ways in which Coetzee's writings have revised and reimagined this vast and complex religious legacy.

<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.

nÃo hà / FundaÃÃo de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Cearà / O presente estudo tem como ponto de partida uma articulaÃÃo entre o discurso literÃrio e o discurso testemunhal, a partir das proposiÃÃes de Giorgio Agamben a respeito da ideia do testemunho como um discurso de Auctor, aquele que à autorizado por outrem a relatar determinados eventos. Esta ideia de testemunho difere do senso comum, como algo que atesta com veracidade e objetividade os acontecimentos, mas està muito mais prÃxima do discurso de invenÃÃo, onde sua veracidade, e sua dimensÃo Ãtica, estÃo mais para aquilo que lhe falta ou mesmo excede, para lembrar a crÃtica portuguesa Silvina Rodrigues Lopes. Desta forma, interessa a este estudo analisar trÃs romances do escritor sul-africano J.M. Coetzee (à Espera dos BÃrbaros, A Idade do Ferro e Desonra) como recortes testemunhais das transformaÃÃes por que passam seus narradores, tanto dentro do contexto da Ãfrica do Sul, quanto em outras dimensÃes simbolizadas ali. Um testemunho onde resvala o peso da Vergonha, como potÃncia de manifestaÃÃo Ãtica, na medida em que aponta a falÃncia de modelos atà entÃo vigentes (colonialismo, Apartheid, o projeto de civilizaÃÃo ocidental), e de uma ordem sacrificial em que mergulham tais narradores-testemunhas. SacrifÃcio dos prÃprios corpos brancos, atà entÃo imunes, legalmente protegidos, sacralizados. SacrifÃcio como profanaÃÃo. / This study has as its starting point an articulation between literary discourse and testimonial speech, from the propositions of Giorgio Agamben about the idea of testimony as an Auctor speech, one who is authorized by others to report certain events. This idea of testimony differs from common sense, as something that testifies truthfully and objectively the events, but is much closer to the speech of the invention, where its veracity, and its ethical dimension, achieve what it lacks or even exceeds, reminding the Portuguese critic Silvina Rodrigues Lopes. Thus, this study is interested in analyzing three novels of the South African writer J.M. Coetzee (Waiting for the Barbarians, The Iron Age and Disgrace) as testimonials clippings of changes that spend their narrators, both inside the South African context as in other dimensions symbolized there. A testimony where slips the burden of Shame, such as an ethical manifestationâ power, in that it points out the failure of models so far established (colonialism, Apartheid, the Western civilization project), and a sacrificial order where such narrators-witnesses dive. Sacrifice of white bodies, hitherto immune, legally protected, sacralized. Sacrifice as profanation.

This thesis posits post-humanism as a philosophy that engages directly with the problem of anthropocentrism and is concerned primarily with the metaphysics of subjectivity. It studies five literary texts (James Joyce's Ulysses, Virginia Woolf's Flush, Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, Brigid Brophy's Hackenfeller's Ape and J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons) that challenge the humanistic or classical subject through critical engagement with what this subject traditionally saw as its antithesis - the animal. These texts contest various fixed assumptions about animality and disrupt the status-quo of the human. Breaking with the tradition that treats animals exclusively as a metaphor for the human, they attempt to see and understand animality outside the framework of anthropocentric suppositions. This project aims to describe the strategies these texts employ to conceptualize animality as well as the methods they apply to delineate its subversive potential and to disrupt the human- animal binary. Its theoretical framework combines the work of thinkers belonging to the new but thriving field of Animal Studies with the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It is this project's great ambition to contribute towards the development of new post- humanist ethics defined by its...

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.

Denna studies syfte och forskningsfråga är att undersöka och besvara hur J.M. Coetzees roman Onåd kan förstås med utgångspunkt i de intersektionella kategorierna kön, ras och klass samt hur man som pedagog kan tillämpa romanen i den svenska gymnasieskolan för att diskutera och undervisa om jämställdhet och människors lika värde. För att nå syftet och frågeställningen undersöks kritiska delar av romanen med hjälp av diskursanalys. Tidigare forskning används också för att undersöka romanen. Metoden är utvald för att synliggöra de strukturer som omger karaktärerna i romanen och handlingsutrymmet de får. Romanen undersöks sedan intersektionellt för att påvisa hur kön, ras och klass påverkar människors livsvillkor. Analysen bedrivs med målet att påvisa hur romanen kan användas för undervisning om människors lika värde och jämställdhet. Resultatet visar att diskursanalysen är ett bra sätt att närma sig romanen genom, för att undervisa om jämställdhet och människors lika värde. Om läraren undervisar med hjälp av diskursanalys lyfts diskussionen om romanen till att handla om hur uttryck och handlingar påverkar och fastställer människors handlingsutrymmen. Det ger även en förståelse för hur människor positioneras i en diskurs. Eleverna får genom detta en möjlighet att se och förstå hur uttryck och handlingar placerar människor i olika makthierarkiska positioner, och att detta inte behöver spegla människans faktiska kvalitéer eller kunskaper. Så småningom kan denna förståelse användas för atti frågasätta stereotyper och normer som förtrycker människor. Genom Skolverkets ämnesspecifika formulering som handlar om att förstå människors livsvillkor med hjälp av litteratur kan läraren nå den ämnesövergripande formuleringen som handlar om att främja jämställdhet och människans lika värde.

This essay discusses rape and silence in J.M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace, with focus on how and why the characters Melanie and Lucy are silenced after being raped. Paying special attention to gender and race, as well as the novel’s South African context, an attempt is made to consider how rape is represented in Disgrace, and how this representation is related to the silence of Melanie and Lucy. The discussion’s theoretical framework is based on feminist theories on sexual violence and rape, as well as theory on cultural scripts, sexual scripts, and rape myths. This essay finds that the rapes in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace are representations of South Africa’s inverted racial power structures, and its traditional gender structures; structures that contribute to silencing Melanie and Lucy. This essay argues that Coetzee has deliberately activated South African cultural scripts in the text in an attempt to expose problematic viewpoints regarding gender and race in society, as well as in the reader.

This thesis examines the nature and value of metafictional practices in the careers of postwar novelists. Discussions of metafiction have been central to accounts of postwar literature. Where debates in the 1980s and 1990s about metafiction tended to make claims about its distinctive political and theoretical power, recent work in the study of institutions has folded metafiction into the routine operation of the literary field, and attacked previous claims to distinctive value. In this thesis I both historicize self-reflexive literary practices in the literary field, an element largely absent from the earlier scholarship, and present historically determinate claims about the value of these practices, an element I suggest is missing from the more recent work. To do so, I turn to the study of autobiography, specifically Philippe Lejeune's concept of 'autobiographical space.' In the first chapter, I explore how J. M. Coetzee develops academic literary criticism in his fiction. In the second chapter, I examine how Janet Frame responds to both the demands of a national literature and biographical inquiry into her life. In the third chapter, I address how Philip Roth handles the relationship between the politics of identity and the postwar novel. Self-reflexive practices, I show throughout, are ways of writing that were encouraged by particular formations in the literary field and were handled by writers through more or less explicit treatments of autobiographical space. I argue, though, that while these practices can be remarkably inventive, they carry no guarantees for political, theoretical, or aesthetic value.