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Adiouani, Hicham. "J. M. Coetzee : vers une poétique de la complexité." Paris 8, 2007. http://www.theses.fr/2007PA082758.
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L’œuvre du romancier sud-africain J. M. Coetzee met en scène plusieurs aspects qui caractérisent la condition post-coloniale. Coetzee complexifie les catégories du centre et de périphérie, d’identité et de différence en proposant une lecture radicalement différente de l’altérité. Sa critique du discours identitaire, sa remise en question du concept de représentation, l’indétermination générique qui caractérise certains de ses romans, le décentrement de la subjectivité et de l’écriture sont autant de tentatives pour proposer une lecture originale et singulière de l’altérité. Une lecture qui ne fait pas violence à l’autre, mais qui se fait violence pour accueillir et faire advenir une altérité radicale. Cette thèse démontre comment le choix d’une poétique de la complexité chez Coetzee vise à proposer une écriture et une lecture éthique de l’altéritéJ. M. Coetzee’s œuvre stages many aspects of the post-colonial condition. Coetzee renders complex the categories of centre and periphery, identity and difference by proposing a radically different reading of alterity. His critique of identitarian discourse, his questioning of the concepts of representation, the decentered writing and subjectivity and the generic indeterminacy that characterise many of his novels are all means of proposing an original and inimitable reading of alterity. A reading that does justice instead of doing violence to the other. This thesis demonstrates how Coetzee’s choice of a poetics of complexity aims at proposing an ethical writing and reading of alterity
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Graham, Lucy Valerie. "The use of the female voice in three novels by J.M. Coetzee." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002267.
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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.
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Kok, Marina Susan. "An investigation of masculinity in J. M. Coetzee's disgrace (1999)." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/783.
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The study of Masculinity is a fairly new phenomenon which developed as a refinement of gender studies. The theoretical frameworks on masculinity are still under development and are often severely contested. This study proposes to examine the dynamics of masculinity studies, critiquing the notion of ‘masculinity in crisis’. The premise of the masculinity in crisis debate is that men are experiencing an increasing sense of powerlessness. This dissertation aims to examine the masculine identities represented in Disgrace and to test whether they are better understood through the lens of masculine theory. The disgraceful situation of David Lurie is arguably not merely a result of hapless circumstance, but rather illustrates significant parallels with the crisis debate. The basic premise of this debate is that the behaviour previously condoned and applauded as healthy 'manliness' is now being labelled as anti-social and destructive. It is not just masculine roles that are under threat. Other forces behind the crisis are “the loss of masculine rights and changes in the pattern of employment” (Beynon 2002:75). One view held by theorists of masculinity studies is that for real change to occur, a fluid definition of masculine identity is needed. In J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), the main protagonist is David Lurie. He may arguably be said to typify a masculinity that is in a state of crisis because of his stoic refusal throughout the novel to change or reform: “I was offered a compromise, which I would not accept”, he says, and: “Re-education. Reformation of the character. The code word was counselling” (1999:66). His aversion to such counselling and refusal to compromise mark his resistance to change.
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Naude, Stephanus Jacobus. "Die uitbeelding van kreatiwiteit in die werk van J. M. Coetzee." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/71919.
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Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: J. M. Coetzee se werke ondersoek dikwels op intense en ongewone wyse wat kreatiwiteit is en hoe dit werk, wat die bronne en oorspronge daarvan is, en verwonder sig aan die onvoorspelbaarheid van die voorwaardes en katalisators vir, en die aard en uitkomste van, die kreatiewe proses. Hierdie essay ondersoek eerstens die teoretisering van literêre kreatiwiteit deur veral Derek Attridge, wat hy hoofsaaklik baseer op Coetzee se werk. Tweedens word die komplekse uitbeeldings – of performance – van kreatiwiteit en die kreatiewe proses in Coetzee se oeuvre, spesifiek aan die hand van The Master of Petersburg en die post-Disgrace werke, ontleed. Daar word gefokus op skeppende karakters en alter ego’s, veral skrywers, wat toenemend hul verskyning in Coetzee se prosa maak. Kwessies van skrywerlike mag, die etiek van skryf, die konflik tussen werklikheidsvlakke binne fiksie asook tussen werklikheid en fiksie, soos dit uitspeel in die hibriede en eksperimentele laat werke, kom aan bod. Die essay maak dikwels van stipleestegnieke gebruik in die lees van die betrokke werke. Ander strategieë word egter ook ingespan, veral by die lees van die laat werke. Die siening van kreatiewe impuls wat aldus blyk, is ‘n radikale een. Kreatiwiteit is blind vir moraliteit en dalk selfs etiek. Dit word onder andere gelykgestel aan die epileptiese val. Dit gaan oor die oopstelling vir – en die eksklusiewe verantwoordelikheid teenoor – die onverwagse, die Beckettiaanse/Derridiaanse proses van ‘n produktiewe/onproduktiewe gewag. Dit word vergestalt deur ‘n gebeurtenis wat beslag vind in die onverminderbare eiesoortigheid van die literêre werk.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: J. M. Coetzee’s work often investigates in an intense and unusual manner the nature of creativity and how it works, what the sources and origins of creativity are, and marvels at the unpredictability of the preconditions and catalysts for, and the nature and outcomes of, the creative process. This essay investigates, in the first place, the theorisation of literary creativity by especially Derek Attridge, which he mainly bases on Coetzee’s work. In the second instance, the complex portrayals – or performances – of creativity and the creative process in Coetzee’s oeuvre are analysed, particularly with reference to The Master of Petersburg and the post-Disgrace works. The focus is on creative characters, particularly authors, who are increasingly making an appearance in Coetzee’s prose. Questions of authorial power, the ethics of writing, the conflict of reality levels within fiction as well as between reality and fiction, as it plays out in the hybird and experimental late works, are presented. The essay often uses close reading in the reading of the mentioned works. Other strategies are also used, particularly in the reading of the late works. The view of the creative impulse thus crystallising, is a radical one. Creativity is blind to morality, and perhaps also ethics. It is equated, inter alia, to the epileptic fit. It is about the opening up – and the exclusive responsibility – to the unexpected, to the Beckettian/Derridian process of a productive/unproductive waiting. It is represented by a happening which precipitates in the irreducible singularity of the literary work.
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Rogez, Mathilde. "La frontière dans les romans de Mark Behr et de J. M. Coetzee." Paris 10, 2008. http://www.theses.fr/2008PA100104.
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Frontière de la colonisation (« frontier ») ou derniers retranchements de l’apartheid avant sa chute (« border »), mais aussi lignes de démarcation sociales, économiques et géographiques : la frontière est omniprésente dans les romans de Mark Behr et de J. M. Coetzee, écho et reflet d’une société obsédée par la division qui, à l’image des Etats-Unis de F. J. Turner, se choisit une identité nationale sur le mode exclusif reposant sur un mythe de la frontière. Le miroir du texte se fait toutefois déformant ; l’écho du discours plurivoque du roman fait subir au discours dogmatique de l’idéologie des modulations qui en sapent les fondements, en réalité labiles. On s’intéressera ainsi à l’élaboration du mythe de la frontière et au panorama historique qu’en dressent les romans, qui font jouer les différents termes renvoyant à la frontière pour souligner l’échec d’une stratégie de confrontation permanente. L’autre de la frontière ne saurait être effacé du territoire ni du texte. Il réapparaît aussi dans le paysage : à un imaginaire du pays qui veut imposer le cadre de la carte ou du tableau, les romans opposent une esthétique du décentrement des points de vue visuel et narratif. Ils font apparaître l’instabilité du sujet lui-même, qui doit se confronter à la « wilderness », désert de la perdition et du salut, contradictions intérieures au sujet. L’acceptation de l’altérité pour éviter l’altération est aussi, enfin, la voie du salut pour l’écriture qui se fait jeu, translation et traduction permanentes entre langues et modes de représentation : invitation au dialogue continué dans la lecture et dans d’autres écritures pour une Afrique du Sud véritablement « nouvelle »Outmost line of an advancing colonial frontier, last border of the apartheid regime under attack from all sides, multifarious lines drawn by the social, economic and geographic segregation: the notion of frontier lies at the core of Mark Behr’s and J. M. Coetzee’s novels. They echo the obsession for division in a society which borrowed from F. J. Turner’s ‘Frontier Theory’ to build an exclusive sense of national identity. The warped mirror of the text, however, gives a distorted image of this myth of the frontier. The fixed, but unstable, discourse of ideology is undermined by the plurivocal discourse of the novel. Playing on the ambivalences between ‘frontier’ and ‘border’, the novels show how the history of permanent confrontation reconstructed by the myth can only lead to failure. The people on the other side of the frontier cannot be erased from either history, territory, imagination or text. They also reappear in the landscape: whereas the myth uses frames, maps, or pictures to exert control, the varying visual and narrative points of view in the novels promote a constant decentring of aesthetic perspective, which actually stems from the instability of the eye/I itself. On the frontier, the subject is indeed confronted to the ‘wilderness’, an ambiguous space of danger and loss, which also holds the promise of salvation—a space which, in fact, lies within the self. To write is therefore to welcome alterity: the text becomes a continual play with metaphors and modes of expression, a permanent translation between spaces and languages—and an invitation to the reader to pursue this dialogue further and to other writers to give voice(s) to a really ‘new’ South Africa
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Oliveira, Carlos Augusto Lima de. "Vergonha, sacrifício e testemunho: 3 desmedidas para 3 romances de J. M. Coetzee." www.teses.ufc.br, 2016. http://www.repositorio.ufc.br/handle/riufc/16673.
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OLIVEIRA, Carlos Augusto Lima de. Vergonha, sacrifício e testemunho: 3 desmedidas para 3 romances de J. M. Coetzee. 2016. 183f. – Tese (Doutorado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Departamento de Letras, Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras, Fortaleza, 2016.Submitted by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-05-06T11:15:21Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2016_tese_caloliveira.pdf: 1076791 bytes, checksum: 6c5e30ac839ffa07f4836d90a7419858 (MD5)
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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 manifestation’ 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.
O presente estudo tem como ponto de partida uma articulação entre o discurso literário e o discurso testemunhal, a partir das proposições de Giorgio Agamben a respeito da ideia do testemunho como um discurso de Auctor, aquele que é 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 está muito mais próxima do discurso de invenção, onde sua veracidade, e sua dimensão ética, estão mais para aquilo que lhe falta ou mesmo excede, para lembrar a crítica portuguesa Silvina Rodrigues Lopes. Desta forma, interessa a este estudo analisar três romances do escritor sul-africano J.M. Coetzee (À Espera dos Bárbaros, A Idade do Ferro e Desonra) como recortes testemunhais das transformações por que passam seus narradores, tanto dentro do contexto da África do Sul, quanto em outras dimensões simbolizadas ali. Um testemunho onde resvala o peso da Vergonha, como potência de manifestação ética, na medida em que aponta a falência de modelos até então vigentes (colonialismo, Apartheid, o projeto de civilização ocidental), e de uma ordem sacrificial em que mergulham tais narradores-testemunhas. Sacrifício dos próprios corpos brancos, até então imunes, legalmente protegidos, sacralizados. Sacrifício como profanação.
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Chantot, Anne. "Colonisation et décolonisation des espaces dans les romans de J. M. Coetzee." Dijon, 2004. http://www.theses.fr/2004DIJOL002.
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Parce que la colonisation au sens historique du terme est impensable sans " espaces " à coloniser, la critique postcoloniale ne peut faire l'économie d'une réflexion sur la représentation littéraire de l'espace colonial, à partir notamment des discours coloniaux qui ont précédé et justifié la colonisation des terres. Dans l'œuvre de l'écrivain sud-africain J. M. Coetzee, cette critique passe par la démythification du discours cartographique - qui, tout en étant au service du pouvoir, a longtemps été conçu comme une représentation neutre et objective de l'espace - et la subversion parodique de codes spatiaux attachés à des genres comme le roman pastoral, le roman " libéral " ou le roman d'aventures. Cependant, consciente de la complicité paradoxale qu'elle entretient avec ce qu'elle critique, elle se reconnaît comme fondamentalement ambigue͏̈, décolonisant d'un côté pour mieux recoloniser de l'autre, ou plutôt, (dé)colonisant dans le même geste. Par conséquent, l'ébauche, dans les romans de Coetzee, d'un espace dé-colonisé, " nomade " - espace non strié par des murs et des clôtures, échappant à la structure dichotomique et manichéenne de l'espace colonial - ne pouvait d'avance être qu'un échec, sauf à considérer que ce n'est pas l'espace autre, mais l'espace textuel, qui est le principal enjeu des romans de Coetzee. La représentation y est le support de stratégies qui en préviennent la colonisation par l'entreprise critique, et notamment par le " critique colonial ", motivé par le désir de coloniser les espaces vides du texte et/ou de réduire l'autre (littéraire) au même, oublieux de l'ambigui͏̈té constitutive de l'espace textuel. En ce sens, la critique postcoloniale à l'œuvre dans les romans de Coetzee ne vise pas tant à inventer de nouvelles représentations de l'espace qu'à changer notre conception de l'écriture et nos démarches interprétatives en tant que lecteursSince foreign countries would not have been colonized in the past, had there been no "space" to colonize, the postcolonial critique cannot avoid an analysis of the representation of colonial space in literature, nor its links to the colonial discourse that preceded and legitimized the colonization of land overseas. The postcolonial critique of colonial space in the novels of the South-African writer Coetzee takes mainly two shapes : first of all, it demystifies the discourse of cartography (which has long been thought to be neutral and objective) ; secondly, it subverts through parody spatial codes attached to specific genres. Nevertheless, because of the awareness that any kind of critique is complicit in what it criticizes, postcolonial critique acknowledges its ambivalence, that at best it (de)colonizes representations of space, that is to say decolonizes and recolonizes them at the very same time. As a consequence, Coetzee's attempt to portray a de-colonized landscape that goes beyond the Manichean binary structure of colonial space is doomed to failure, unless we realize that what is at stake is less represented space than textual space. Representation in his novels mainly aims at elaborating strategies that prevent its colonization by what we may call "colonial critics" - critics that are anxious to colonize the empty or indeterminate spaces of the text and/or to reduce the (literary) other to the same, neglectful of the ambiguous quality of literary texts. As a result, the postcolonial critique in Coetzee's novels intends not so much to invent new representations of space as to change our conception of literature and our way of interpreting texts
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Hamilton, Grant A. R. School of English UNSW. "Beyond representation : Coetzee, Deleuze, and the colonial subject." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of English, 2005. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/22310.
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This thesis concerns the colonial subject, subjectivity, and resistance in postcolonial theory and literature. It argues that contemporary attempts within the practice of postcolonial theory to retrieve a colonial subject from a representation that issues from a dominating colonial discourse can only be met with failure. Thus, this thesis follows Spivak's claim that the colonial subject is merely a production of positions granted by its very representation, which is to say, a given. However, this thesis also recognises that Spivak's assertion cannot account for moments of resistance to colonial discourse that abound in postcolonial literature. As such, this thesis claims that the colonial subject is not wholly given; that if one approaches the colonial subject through Gilles Deleuze's re-writing of subjectivity, demonstrated in the concept of 'the body without organs', then a transcendent configuration of the colonial subject is revealed. In elucidating this claim, this thesis turns to the fiction of South African academic and novelist, J.M. Coetzee. It is argued that Coetzee writes the Other by 'staging it', that is by testing the limits and eventually going beyond the authoritarian regime of representation. Thus, this thesis is constructed by three main chapters that offer both a rethinking of postcolonial theory in light of the work of Deleuze, and a reading of a selected cynosure of texts authored by Coetzee. The first chapter is a reading of Coetzee's Dusklands that concentrates on the body as a site of resistance to the manoeuvres of representation, demonstrating it to be a site that takes authority in the production of truth from the 'objective', structured methodology of reason, while the second chapter offers a reading of Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians that interrogates the postcolonial concern with 'space'. It is in this novel that Coetzee renders space in terms of its dynamic relationship with the nomad, which ultimately problematises the colonial endeavour to organise, represent, and thereby, 'know' the world. The final chapter engages Coetzee's Foe by way of a sustained critique of the operation of language, and demonstrates how Coetzee manages to test the boundaries of representation through language use. As such, each chapter offers a specific account of an entire programme that tends towards the transgression of the binds organised by the operation of representation.
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Campos, Lucie. "Fictions contemporaines et conscience historique : J. M. Coetzee, I. Kertész, W. G. Sebald." Poitiers, 2010. https://acces.bibliotheque-diderot.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.15122/isbn.978-2-8124-4250-6.
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Les oeuvres de J. M Coetzee, I. Kertész, W. G. Sebald témoignent d'un effort spécifique du littéraire pour répliquer à la violence des évènements qui ont forgé la conscience historique du 20e siècle. A la pression d'un réel historique des évènements inassimilable et destructeur, ces écrivains répondent par un travail d'écriture et de clarification soucieux à la fois de son inscription dans un champ politique et de ses limites philosophiques. .The literary works of J. M Coetzee, I. Kertész and W. G. Sebald confront the violent events that have shaped the historical consciousness of the twentieth century with the specific tools of literature and fiction. In an effort to respond to the pressure of a destructive historical reality that is difficult to assimilate, these writers have sought to clarify their position within a political and philosophical field. .
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Rocha, Lucas Kirschke da. "Ecce animot : um percurso analítico pós-humanista através de Elizabeth Costello e Desonra, de J. M. Coetzee." reponame:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRGS, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10183/172900.
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Esta dissertação trata dos Estudos Animais, área que se desenvolve como um rico campo de interdisciplinaridade já em sua origem. Mas para que não se julgue aprioristicamente um campo em suas particularidades, há que se esclarecer pontos em comum aos teóricos das mais diversas origens acadêmicas que compõem os Estudos animais e traçar planos para um futuro significativo. Após estabelecer os necessários diálogos entre teoria e campo social, passo à análise de certos pontos das obras Desonra e Elizabeth Costello, com o objetivo de evidenciar o potencial deste corpus para o desenvolvimento da crítica das categorias de humanidade e animalidade segundo os aportes do Pós-humanismo e inserindo-a no campo dos Estudos Animais. O teórico fundamental para este trabalho é Jacques Derrida, principalmente em sua obra O animal que logo sou. Após apresentar um panorama dos Estudos Animais, sobretudo sob a abordagem de Paul Waldau, trago ao encontro desses autores a pós-humanista Rosi Braidotti, de cuja obra The Post-human retiro as categorias do devir-planetário e devir-animal, as quais dão consequência às análises do corpus literário deste trabalho. Dialogo, ainda, com a Mitleidsethik, a ética da compaixão de Schopenhauer. Concluo que as tarefas dos Estudos Animais e do Pós-humanismo se assemelham no que toca à maior compreensão das interações interespecíficas, para a proposição consequente de novas formas de conviver num mundo mais-que-humano.This dissertation deals with the Animal Studies, an area that develops as a rich field of interdisciplinarity already in its origin.. But in order not to make an aprioristic judgement of a field in its particularities, it is necessary to clarify points in common to the theoreticians of the most diverse academic origins that compose the Animal Studies and to draw up plans for a significant future. After establishing the necessary dialogues between theory and social field, I proceed to the analysis of certain points of the works Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello, with the objective of highlighting the potential of this corpus for the development of the critique of the categories of humanity and animality according to the contributions of Posthumanism and inserting it in the field of Animal Studies. The fundamental theorist for this work is Jacques Derrida, mainly in his work O animal que logo sou. After presenting an overview of the Animal Studies, especially under the approach of Paul Waldau, I bring to the meeting the post-humanist Rosi Braidotti, whose work The post-human retreat the categories of becoming-earth and becoming-animal, which give consequence to the analysis of the literary corpus of this work. I also dialogue with the Mitleidsethik, the ethic of compassion of Schopenhauer. I conclude that the tasks of Animal Studies and Post-humanism are similar in relation to the greater understanding of the inter-species interactions, for the consequent proposition of new ways of living in a more-than-human world.
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Roux, Christine Ann. "South African memoirs in a decade of transition: Athol Fugard's Cousins (1994), J.M. Coetzee's Boyhood (1997), and Breyten Breytenbach's Dog Heart (1999)." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002233.
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This thesis examines three South African memoirs using M. M. Bakhtin’s theories of the dialogical relationship in language and literature. By offering an alternative to a postmodern or multicultural interpretation of autobiographies, Bakhtin’s precepts, that define a dialogic, help to reframe a way of discussing memoirs and avoiding dead-ends previously arrived at by essayists in James Olney’s 1980 collection. Bakhtin’s ideas discussed here, which include the “once-occurrent moment”, “architectonic contraposition”, ”emotional-volitional tone”, “alibi”, “non-alibi”, and “centripetal” and “centrifugal” force, help to rebuild a discussion based on temporary and evolving self truth rather than fiction, the postmodern interpretation, or confession, the new-age secular spiritualism based on multicultural and politically correct standards. For this, each author’s memoir had to be examined separately and a conclusion was arrived at through inductive analysis. Rather than try to find similar characteristics, I focused on what made each memoir different and unique. Janet Varner Gunn’s Autobiography: Toward A Poetics of Experience (1982) refocused the debate over autobiography on process. The question, what steps did each author take toward writing about himself, led the discussion to an examination of the priorities each author exemplified. Beginning with Fugard who emphasized spatial, concrete, and sensory detail to help him contain his emotional life, the thesis moves on to an examination of Coetzee’s sense of justice. From the physical and intellectual world follows Breytenbach’s spiritual space-making. In each memoir, control of space is evident on different levels of experience. Articulating space inevitably leads to a discussion of boundaries. Here, Charles Taylor’s emphasis on the modern self’s need to articulate a horizon or a framework is helpful in generalizing the effect of the autobiographical process. The conclusion reached is that autobiography is inherently centrifugal: it moves away from the center of cultural thinking because its “truth” bolsters itself on dialogical process which does not depend on a fixed authority but rather on communicative exchange. As an example of exchange, autobiography’s central truth is that it returns to a “unique point of origin”, namely the self, only to reconnect to the other in a potentially eternal exchange of responsiveness moving away from the center.
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Da, Cunha Lewin Katherine. "The reconnoiter inward : interiority and spatial aesthetics in the novels of Don DeLillo and J.M. Coetzee." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2018. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/77286/.
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Smuts, Merriman Eckard. "Embedded subjectivity in the work of J.M. Coetzee." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/18698.
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Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis is the result of an immersion in the work of J.M. Coetzee. I have taken various of Coetzee’s novels, namely Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons, Disgrace, The Master of Petersburg, Foe, Life & Times of Michael K and Slow Man, and constructed readings of these novels from the inside out. The overarching concern of the dissertation is the notion of subjectivity and Coetzee’s methods of representing subjectivity. It is my contestation that the experience of authentic subjective awareness arises from the process of reading itself. It is not a state of being that is described by the text, but rather a layered constellation of substitutive exchanges that emerges from the process of textual relation. The notion of embeddedness serves as a description of the way in which the text materializes this experience of subjectivity. The structure of exploration in each chapter has taken as its paradigm a conceptual concern arising from the text itself. In the first chapter (Elizabeth Costello) the concern is with structure itself. The character of Elizabeth struggles against the limitation inherent in the process of representation; this struggle is read as an indication of authentic subjective experience in the face of reduction to a system of codes. The second chapter (Disgrace) attempts to formulate the dynamic of subjective awareness in romantic terms. I construct a reading of Lurie’s predicament in terms that arise from his conceptual environment, in order to indicate the primacy of textual materiality as the locus of subjective awareness. The notion of the classic informs the third chapter (The Master of Petersburg). I use an essay by Coetzee to delineate a conception of the classic, which is then applied as a theoretical framework for an exploration of Dostoevsky’s pursuit of his stepson. The fourth and last chapter (Foe, Life & Times of Michael K and Slow Man) focuses on Coetzee’s use of the body as a figure for embedded subjectivity. It emerges that the body as a trope of embeddedness forms an important aspect of Coetzee’s work throughout his career. As such it is a very suitable figure for describing the dynamics of embeddedness as a mode of representation that aligns itself with the textual materiality of subjective being.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis het ontstaan as die gevolg van ‘n noukeurige ondersoek na die werk van J.M. Coetzee. Ek het myself laat begelei deur die inhoud van verskeie van Coetzee se boeke, naamlik Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons, Disgrace, The Master of Petersburg, Foe, Life & Times of Michael K en Slow Man, om intensiewe lesings van hierdie boeke te konstrueer. Die oorkoepelende bemoeienis van die verhandeling is die konsep van subjektiwiteit en Coetzee se metodes van subjektiewe voorstelling. Ek beweer dat die ervaring van outentieke subjektiewe gewaarwording gesetel is in die leesproses. Dit is nie ‘n toestand van wese wat deur die teks beskryf word nie, maar eerder ‘n verweefde raamwerk van substituwe wisseling wat kom uit die proses van tekstuele relasie. Die konsep van inlywing (“embeddedness”) dien as 'n beskrywing van die manier waarop die teks hierdie ervaring van subjektiwiteit konkretiseer. Die struktuur van ondersoek in elke hoofstuk neem as paradigma 'n konsepsuele vraagstuk wat reeds gesetel is in die teks. In die eerste hoofstuk (Elizabeth Costello) is die bemoeienis met struktuur as sodanig. Elizabeth se karakter stry teen die inperking wat noodwending saamgaan met die proses van voorstelling; hierdie stryd word gelees as 'n aanduiding van outentieke subjektiewe ervaring teenoor die druk van vermindering tot 'n stel kodes. Die tweede hoofstuk (Disgrace) poog om die dinamiek van subjektiewe bewustheid te formuleer in terme wat afkomstig is van die romantiek. Ek konstrueer 'n lees van Lurie se toestand in terme wat kom van sy konsepsuele omgewing, om sodoende die voorrang van tekstuele materialiteit as die lokus van outentieke subjektiwiteit aan te dui. Die konsep van die klassieke belig die derde hoofstuk (The Master of Petersburg). Ek gebruik 'n essay van Coetzee om 'n begrip van die klassieke te formuleer, wat dan toegepas word as 'n teoretiese raamwerk waarbinne Dostoevsky se soeke na sy stiefseun ondersoek word. Die vierde en laaste hoofstuk (Foe, Life & Times of Michael K en Slow Man) fokus op Coetzee se gebruik van die liggaam as 'n figuur vir ingelyfde subjektiwiteit. Dit blyk dat die liggaam as 'n figuur van inlywing 'n prominente aspek van Coetzee se werk vorm deur sy loopbaan. As sodaning is dit 'n baie handige figuur om die dinamiek van inlywing te beskryf as 'n modus van voorstelling wat sigself koppel aan die materialiteit van die teks.
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Van, Heerden Imke. "“A life lived in cages”: strategies of containment in J.M. Coetzee’s Age of iron, Life & times of Michael K, Elizabeth Costello: eight lessons and “The poetics of reciprocity”." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/1746.
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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.
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Mfune, Damazio Laston. "My other - my self: post-Cartesian ontological possibilities in the fiction of J M Coetzee." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002289.
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The central argument of my study is that, among other matters, in his works, J.M. Coetzee could be said to demonstrate that the known Self is an embodied being and is not autonomous. With regard to the latter contention, Coetzee intimates that any two Subjects are implicated in each other’s subjectivities in a reciprocal process that involves what Derek Attridge has called “irruptions of otherness” (2005: xii) into the Subject’s subjectivity. These irruptions, which happen during the encounter, lead to a double loss of autonomy for each Subject and this phenomenon renders the relationship between Subjects non-dichotomus or non-binaric. In other words, the Subject does not produce the contents of his or her consciousness in a sui generis and ex nihilo fashion, and his or her ontological indebtedness to the Other constitutes his or her first loss of autonomy. As for those Others that do possess consciousness, the Subject is implicated in their consciousness and this constitutes the Subject’s second loss of autonomy. These losses counter the near solipsistic Nagelian neo-Cartesianism and paves the way for imagining both intra- and inter-species “intersubjectivity”. It is my view that this double loss of autonomy accounts for the sympathetic and empathetic imagination that we encounter in Coetzee’s fiction. Following Coetzee’s intimations of intersubjectivity through irruptions of otherness, what I see as my contribution to studies on this author’s work through this study is the link I have established between the physicalist strain within the philosophy of mind (whose central thesis is that consciousness is an embodied phenomenon) and a modified Kantian “metaphysics”, especially Immanuel Kant’s conception of concepts as comprising form and content. I have deployed this conception in demonstrating the Subject’s ontological indebtedness to external sources of the content part of consciousness. And, through the Husserlian concept of intentionality, and Kant’s (1929: 27) observation that we cannot have appearances without something that appears, I have linked the Subject to the sources of his or her content and thereby also demonstrated that the Subject is not eternally separated or alienated from those sources. Instead, the Subject is not simply contiguous but coterminous and co-extensive, albeit in a mediated way, with the external sources of the content part of his or her consciousness. Thus, while accepting the thesis of the Other’s radical otherness, I modify the thesis of the Other’s radical exteriority. Ultimately, then, ontologically speaking, the Coetzeean project could be described as one of embodying and grounding the supposedly autonomous, solipsistic and freefloating/disembodied Cartesian Subject. This he does by alerting this Subject, first and foremost, to its embodiedness and, further to that, pointing out its ontological indebtedness to its Others and its implication in the Others’s consciousnesses and so prevent it from continuing with its imperialistic and ecological barbarities. However, ethically speaking, beyond the reciprocal ethics that arises from mutual ontological indebtedness and implication, it is the selflessness that characterises a cruciform logic that comes across as the epitome of Coetzeean ethics.
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Garrett, Oliver James. "Fictions of ethics and identity : ideological negotiations and representations in the works of Joseph Conrad and J. M. Coetzee." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.496172.
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This thesis sets out to consider Joseph Conrad's and J. M. Coetzee's approaches to, and interrogations of, theories of ethics and identity. In pursuit of this task, the study presents an analysis of the authors' distinctive and complementary address to the ways in which certain influential concepts are 'applied' by, and within, their cultures. Especially relevant in this respect, as extensive preoccupations of both Conrad and Coetzee, are the authors' literary expressions of 'consciousness' and 'conscience'. In noting the special attention paid by these authors to the writing of consciousness, and to the consciousness of writing, the thesis illustrates particular thematic representations and engagements with the notion of the 'self and the 'human good'.
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Hornby, Catherine Muriel. "A history of confession: the dialogue between cynicism and grace in selected novels of J.M. Coetzee." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002232.
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In introducing the four novels under discussion as a “History of Confession”, this study explores the resistance to the dominant discourse of ‘history’ offered by the sustained confessions of individuals. In examining Coetzee’s oeuvre it is possible to delineate the outline of a dialogue between cynicism and grace, and the effects of these on the process of confession in each of the works Chapter One, dealing with Age of Iron, draws on Levinas’ theory of ‘the Other’ in order to elucidate the role played by the interlocutor or confessor in the process of confession.The recognition of the passage of the self through the Other is integral to the attainment of a state of grace, without which confession cannot be brought to an end The countermanding claims of the writer's will-to-write and duty to society are illuminated as a source of cynicism which overwhelms the intervention of grace. The Master of Petersburg, discussed in Chapter Two, is a confession of the guilt and despair faced by the writer who sacrifices his soul to answer the urge to write. Chapter Three, which examines Coetzee’s excursion into autobiography, represents a continuation of the confessional trend. The distance between the narrator and protagonist of Boyhood illustrates the convolutions of self-deception in the process of confession. The chapter which deals with Disgrace identifies a new trend in Coetzee’s writing:the concern with animals. Levinas’ theory, which identifies the encounter with the Other as necessary to precipitate an intervention of grace, is again useful in explaining how Coetzee has postulated the unassimilable otherness of animals as primary to human ethical development. This chapter also concludes that Disgrace represents a high point in the recovery of both grace and agency in Coetzee’s oeuvre.The concluding chapter suggests that the accumulation of meanings to the term ‘grace’enables its definition as a semi-religious abstraction. Coetzee suggests that belief in its existence has the power to affect interactions on the physical plane, especially those between the self and the Other.
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Stanton, Katherine. "Cosmopolitan fictions : ethics, politics, and global change in the works of Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Ondaatje, Jamaica Kincaid, and J. M. Coetzee /." New York : Routledge, 2006. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb40066035t.
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Moraes, Sinara Gislene Foss. "Coetzee's Foe: a reading on history and fiction." reponame:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRGS, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10183/14652.
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O escritor ganhador do Prêmio Nobel de Literatura John Maxwell Coetzee publicou Foe em 1987. Ao lermos esse romance, somos imediatamente levados à ilha de Robinson Crusoe - e, conseqüentemente, ao mundo ficcional de Daniel Defoe. O objetivo deste trabalho é tomar a leitura da obra Foe, de Coetzee, como um comentário sobre a estética de construção de um romance. Esta é uma dissertação argumentativa, dividida em três partes. O primeiro capítulo introduz o autor e contextualiza as discussões sobre a Escrita, a História e a Ficção. O segundo capítulo traz o suporte teórico, que consiste na apresentação das idéias de Linda Hutcheon sobre Historiografia e nas conceitualizações sobre Meta-ficção, de Patricia Waugh. Ambas conduzem à referência poética ao Anjo da História feita por Walter Benjamin. A terceira parte comenta o romance Foe e o insere no conjunto da obra de Coetzee, apontando elementos compartilhados com os outros romances do autor. Na conclusão, espero validar a tese proposta, de que Foe é realmente um romance auto-reflexivo que reflete as condições de produção de sua época.Nobel prize winner John Maxwell Coetzee published Foe in 1987. When reading that novel, we are taken back to Robinson Crusoe’s island – and, consequently, to the world of Daniel Defoe’s fiction. The aim of this work is to undertake the reading of Coetzee’s Foe as a study on the aesthetics of novelmaking. This is an argumentative thesis, divided into three parts. Chapter one introduces the author and contextualizes the discussions on Writing, History and Fiction. Chapter two brings the theoretical background, that consists of the presentation of Linda Hutcheon’s ideas about Historiography and Patricia Waugh’s conceptualizations on Metafiction, both of them relating to Walter Benjamin’s poetic reference to the Angel of History. The third part submits an analysis of Foe, and connects this novel with the other works written by Coetzee. In the conclusion, I hope to validate the thesis proposed, that Foe is, ultimately, a self-reflexive novel that reflects the aesthetics of novel making of its own time.
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Naidoo, Kareesha. "Between text and stage: the theatrical adaptations of J.M. Coetzee's Foe." Thesis, University of the Western Cape, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/5032.
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Magister Artium - MAThis thesis will critically analyse two theatrical adaptations of J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986). Primarily, this thesis will be seeking to understand the complex relationship of the primary text to its adaptations more closely, regarding them not only as second-order versions or interpretations of the novel, but also to consider the way they may retrospectively construct new readings and understandings of the source text. This thesis will not only consider the way in which Foe is used in the adaptations but also how Robinson Crusoe (1719) influenced the adaptors and adaptive process. Theories of adaptation will be discussed, drawing extensively on work by Linda Hutcheon (2006) and Robert Stam (2005). One of the key ideas in adaptation theory is that adaptive fidelity to the source text is neither possible nor desirable, but that adaptation is a more complex, multi-layered intertextual and intermedial interplay of fictional material. One of the aims of this thesis is to ask whether or not Foe can be successfully transposed to the stage. This thesis will serve as a close analysis of the two theatrical adaptations, focusing on the beginning and endings of the respective adaptations. This research will contribute a new approach to Coetzee studies and to Foe in particular by exploring how these texts can lead to a broader understanding of Coetzee's work and the way it crosses into different media.
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Cuenca, Vivanco Catalina. "Travels, journeys and subjectivities: the exiles in Coetzee's Disgrace and Auster's In the country of last things." Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 2016. http://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/143298.
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Hogarth, Claire Milne. "Epistolary constructions of identity in Derrida's "Envois" and Coetzee's Age of Iron." Thesis, McGill University, 2001. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=38204.
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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
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Lau, Garfield Chi Sum. "The ubiquity of terror: reading family, violence and gender in selected African Anglophone novels." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2016. https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_oa/262.
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Terror in the African Anglophone novels of Chinua Achebe, Doris Lessing, J.M. Coetzee and Laila Lalami originated as a consequence of a breakdown in the family structure. Traditionally, conventional patriarchy, in addition to securing the psychological and material needs of the family, has served as one of the building blocks of tribes and nations. Since the father figure within narrative is allegorized as a metonym of the state, the absence of patriarchal authority represents the disintegration of the link between individuals and national institutions. Consequently, characters may also turn to committing acts of terror as a rejection of the dominant national ideology. This dissertation aims to demonstrate how the breakdown of the family and the conventional gendering of roles may give rise to terrorist violence in the African setting. To recontextualize the persistence of the Conradian definition of terror as an Anglo-European phenomenon brought to Africa, I contrast the ways in which the breakdown of the family affects both indigenous and Anglo-European households in Africa across generations. I suggest that, under the reinvention of older gender norms, the unfulfilling Anglo-European patriarchy exposes Anglo-European women to indigenous violence. Moreover, I theorize that the absence of patriarchal authority leads indigenous families to seek substitutions in the form of alternative family institutions, such as religious and political organizations, that conflict with the national ideology. Furthermore, against the backdrop of globalized capitalism, commodity fetishism emerges as a substitute to compensate for the absent father figure. Therefore, this project demonstrates the indisputable relationship between the breakdown of the family structure and individual acts of terror that aim at the fulfillment of capitalist fetish or individual desire, and at the expense of national security. Finally, the rhetorical dimension of terror against family and women in Africa will be proven to be the allegorized norm of globalized terror in the twenty-first century.
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Bonthuys, Eugene. "Writing, reading ... reconciliation? : the role of literature in post-apartheid South Africa." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/53228.
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Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2002.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Socially responsible writing has been a feature of South African literature for many years. Under apartheid, many novels dealt with apartheid, as it was one of the main features of our social landscape. The end of apartheid did not however bring about the end of a need for socially responsible writing. South Africa is still faced with many problems, one of which is reconciliation. This thesis investigates whether reconciliation may have become a new theme in South African novels, and whether these novels could playa role in assisting the process of reconciliation in the country. For this purpose, three South African works are analysed, namely Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog, Smell of Apples by Mark Behr and Disgrace by J .M. Coetzee. The introduction attempts to explain the psychological discourse surrounding reconciliation, especially Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and parallels that may exists. The main body presents detailed readings of the three works, with the focus being on the presentation of reconciliation in the works, and the role that the individual works could play in assisting the reader in coming to terms with his or her feelings of guilt.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Vir baie jare was apartheid die onderwerp van baie Suid Afrikaanse skrywers aangesien dit die mees problematiese element van Suid Afrikaanse samelewing was. Die einde van apartheid het egter nie die einde van alle probleme beteken nie. Een van die belangrike probleme is versoening. Hierdie tesis ondersoek die moontlikheid dat versoening die nuwe tema in Suid Afrikaanse letterkunde geword het en ofhierdie werke 'n bydrae kan lewer tot werklike versoening. Vir hierdie doel word drie werke behandel, naamlik Country of My Skull deur Antjie Krog, Smell of Apples deur Mark Behr en Disgrace deur J .M. Coetzee. Die inleiding poog om die sielkundige diskoers om versoening te verduidelik, veral rondom posttraumatiese stres, en die ooreenkomste wat mag voorkom. Die hoofdeel van die tesis bestaan uit 'n diepgaande bespreking van die drie werke, met die fokus op versoening in die werk, maar ook die rol wat die werke kan speel om die leser deur sy ofhaar skuld gevoelens te help.
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Steenkamp, Elzette. "Borrowing identities : a study of identity and ambivalence in four canonical English texts and the literary responses each invokes." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/2725.
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Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2008.The notion that the post-colonial text stands in direct opposition to the canonical European text, and thus acts as a kind of counter-discourse, is generally accepted within post-colonial theory. In fact, this concept is so fashionable that Salman Rushdie’s assertion that ‘the Empire writes back to the Centre’ has been adopted as a maxim within the field of post-colonial studies, simultaneously a mission statement and a summative description of the entire field. In its role as a ‘response’ to a dominant European literary tradition, the post-colonial text is often regarded as resorting to a strategy of subversion through inversion, in essence, telling the ‘other side of the story’. The post-colonial text, then, seeks to address the ways in which the western literary tradition has marginalised, misrepresented and silenced its others by providing a platform for these dissenting voices. While such a view rightly points to the post-colonial text’s concern with alterity and oppression, it also points to the agonistic nature of the genre. That is, within post-colonial theory, the literature of Empire does not emerge as autonomous and self-determining, but is restricted to the role of counter-discourse, forever placed in direct opposition (or in response) to a unified dominant social order. Post-colonial theory’s continued classification of the literature of Empire as a reaction to a normative, dominant discourse against which all others must be weighed and found wanting serves to strengthen the binary order which polarises centre and periphery. This study is concerned with ‘rewritten’ post-colonial texts, such as J.M. Coetzee’s Foe, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Marina Warner’s Indigo, or, Mapping the Waters and Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest, and suggests that these revised texts exceed such narrow definition. Although often characterised by a concern with ‘political’ issues, the revised text surpasses the romantic notion of ‘speaking back’ by pointing to a more complex entanglement between post-colonial and canonical, self and other. These texts signal the collapse of binary order and the emergence of a new literary landscape in which there can be no dialogue between the clearly demarcated sites of Empire and Centre, but rather a global conversation that exceeds geographical location. It would seem as if the dependent texts in question resist offering mere pluralistic subversions of the logic of their pretexts. The desire to challenge the assumptions of a Eurocentric literary tradition is overshadowed by a distinct sense of disquiet or unease with the matrix text. This sense of unease is read as a response to an exaggerated iterability within the original text, which in turn stems from the matrix text’s inability to negotiate its own aporia. The aim of this study, then, is not to uncover the ways in which the post-colonial rewrite challenges the assumptions of its literary pretext, but rather to establish how certain elements of instability and subversion already present within the colonial pretext allows for such a return.
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Crous, Matthys Lourens. "Presentations of masculinity in a selection of male-authored post-apartheid novels." Thesis, Link to the online version, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10019/1672.
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Mulder, F. Adele. "Bodies and borders : space and subjectivity in three South African texts." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/2444.
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Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis interrogates the relationship between body, subjectivity and space in three antipastoral novels. The texts which I will be discussing, Karel Schoeman’s This Life, Anne Landsman’s The Devil’s Chimney and J.M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country, all foreground the female protagonist’s relationship to a specifically South African landscape in a colonial time-frame. The inter-relatedness between the body, subjectivity and space is explored in order to show that there is a shifting interaction between these registers in the novels. Arising from this interaction, the importance of perspective as a way of being in the world is foregrounded. The approach adopted in this study is based on the assumption that our experience depends upon how we make meaning of the world through our bodies as we encounter people, places and objects. The lived, embodied experience is always a subjective experience. The conceptual framework is derived broadly from psychoanalysis and phenomenology. My primary concern in this study is how marginal subject positions are explored in the space of the South African farm, which, traditionally, is an ideologically fraught locus of Afrikaner patriarchy and oppression. The novels are narrated by distinctive female voices, each speaking differently, but all having the effect of undermining and exposing the hegemony of the patriarchal farm space. In all three novels the question of genre is involved as forming the space of the text itself. The novels speak to the tradition of the plaasroman and the pastoral and, in doing so, open up a conversation with the past.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie tesis word die verhouding tussen die liggaam, subjektiwiteit en ruimte ondersoek in drie romans wat teen die pastorale literêre tradisie spreek. Die betrokke romans is This Life deur Karel Schoeman, The Devil’s Chimney deur Anne Landsman en In the Heart of the Country deur J.M. Coetzee. Die romans speel af in ‘n koloniale tydperk waar die vroulike protagonis se verhouding met die Suid-Afrikaanse landskap op die voorgrond gestel word. Die verwantskap tussen die liggaam, subjektiwiteit en ruimte word ondersoek om die interaksie tussen hierdie drie konsepte ten toon te stel. Wat vanuit hierdie interaksie voortspruit is die ontologiese rol wat perspektief speel as wyse om met die wêreld te verkeer. Hierdie studie benader die romans vanuit die siening dat die mens se ervaring afhang van hoe hy/sy die wêreld verstaan deur die interaksie tussen die liggaam en ander mense, ruimtes en objekte. Die beliggaamde ervaring is dus ‘n subjektiewe ervaring. Die konsepsuele raamwerk van hierdie ondersoek is afgelei van psigoanalise en fenomenologie. Die kern van hierdie studie is om te ondersoek hoe die posisie van die randfiguur in die ruimte van die Suid-Afrikaanse plaas ten toon gestel word. Die plaas is tradisioneel ‘n ideologiese bestrede ruimte van Afrikaner patriargie en onderdrukking. Die romans word verhaal deur drie kenmerkende en verskillende vroulike stemme wat dien om die hegemonie van die patriargale opset op die plase te ondermyn en ontbloot. Die vraagstuk van genre is in al drie romans betrokke aangesien genre die ruimte van die teks self uitmaak. Die romans spreek teen die tradisie van die plaasroman en die pastorale roman en tree sodoende in gesprek met die verlede.
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Hjul, Lauren Martha. "The family in Shakespeare's plays: a study of South African revisions." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001832.
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This thesis provides a detailed consideration of the family in Shakespeare’s canon and the engagement therewith in three South African novels: Hill of Fools (1976) by R. L. Peteni, My Son’s Story (1990) by Nadine Gordimer, and Disgrace (1999) by J. M. Coetzee. The study is divided into an introduction, three chapters each addressing one of the South African novels and its relationship with a Shakespeare text or texts, and a conclusion. The introductory chapter provides an analysis of the two strands of criticism in which the thesis is situated – studies of the family in Shakespeare and studies of appropriations of Shakespeare – and discusses the ways in which these two strands may be combined through a detailed discussion of the presence of power dynamics in the relationship between parent and child in all of the texts considered. The three chapters each contextualise the South African text and provide detailed discussions of the family dynamics within the relevant texts, with particular reference to questions of authority and autonomy. The focus in each chapter is determined by the nature of the intertextual relationship between the South African novel and the Shakespearean text being discussed. Thus, the first chapter, “The Dissolution of Familial Structures in Hill of Fools” considers power dynamics in the family as an inherent part of the Romeo and Juliet genre, of which William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is but a part. Similarly, the impact of a socio-political identity, and the secrecy it necessitates, is the focus of the second chapter, “Fathers, Sons and Legacy in My Son’s Story” as is the role of Shakespeare and literature within South Africa. These concerns are connected to the novel’s use of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, King Lear, and Hamlet. In the third chapter, “Reclaiming Agency through the Daughter in Disgrace and The Tempest”, I expand on Laurence Wright’s argument that Disgrace is an engagement with The Tempest and consider ways in which the altered power dynamic between father and daughter results in the reconciliation of the father figure with society. The thesis thus addresses the tension between parental bonds and parental bondage
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Rayneard, Max James Anthony. "Performing Literariness: Literature in the Event in South Africa and the United States." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12083.
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x, 208 p.In this dissertation "literariness" is defined not merely as a quality of form by which texts are evaluated as literary, but as an immanent and critical sensibility by which reading, writing, speaking, learning, and teaching subjects within the literary humanities engage language in its immediate aesthetic (and thus also historical and ethical) aspect. This reorientation seeks to address the literary academy's overwhelming archival focus, which risks eliding literary endeavor as an embodied undertaking that inevitably reflects the historical contingency of its enactment. Literary endeavor in higher education is thus understood as a performance by which subjects enact not only the effect of literary texts upon themselves but also the contingencies of their socio-economic, national, cultural, and personal contexts. Subjects' responses to literature are seen as implicit identity claims that, inevitably constituted of biases, can be evaluated through the lens of post-positivist realism in terms of their ethical and pragmatic usefulness. Framing this reoriented literariness in terms of its enactment in higher education literature classrooms, this dissertation addresses its pedagogical, methodological, and personal implications. The events of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the literature arising from it serve as a pivotal case study. The TRC Hearings, publically broadcast and pervasive in the national discourse of the time, enacted a scenario in which South Africans confronted the implications for personal and national identities of apartheid's racial abuses. The dissertation demonstrates through close reading and anecdotal evidence how J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace and Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull formally reactivate this scenario in the subject in the event of reading, while surveys of critical responses to these texts show how readers often resisted the texts' destabilizing effects. A critical account of the process that resulted in Telling, Eugene - a stage production in which U.S. military veterans tell their stories to their civilian communities - analyzes the idea of literariness in the U.S. and assesses its potential for socially engaged literary praxis.
Committee in charge: Linda Kintz, Chairperson; Suzanne Clark, Member; Michael Hames-Garcia, Member; John Schmor, Outside Member
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"Erasing the myth of autonomy: the relational self in J. M. Coetzee's boyhood and youth." 2004. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5891996.
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Tsui Yuk-Chun.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2004.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-91).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Acknowledgements --- p.iii
Chapter Chapter One --- Introduction: Autonomous vs Relational Selves --- p.1
Chapter Chapter Two --- The Relational Self in J. M. Coetzee's Boyhood --- p.23
Chapter Chapter Three --- The Relational Self in J. M. Coetzee's Youth --- p.52
Chapter Chapter Five --- Conclusion --- p.86
Works Cited --- p.87
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Caldwell, Christine Sego. "IMAGINING THE OTHER: THE POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS OF THE SYMPATHETIC IMAGINATION IN J. M. COETZEE’S RECENT FICTION." Thesis, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/2710.
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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)In three of J. M. Coetzee’s recent novels, Disgrace (1999), Elizabeth Costello (2003), and Slow Man (2005), the South African author explores notions of authorship and challenges the possibilities of the sympathetic imagination. The notion of the sympathetic imagination has roots in Romanticism, and it connotes inhabiting another in order to understand or interpret. Romantic poet John Keats described the poet as “continually in for [sic] and filling some other body” (Letter to Richard Woodhouse), and Coetzee addresses the notion of the sympathetic imagination in his work. There are two facets of the sympathetic imagination: that which governs social relations and that which authors and creative minds attempt to claim as a driving force behind their work. It is important not to conflate the two separate facets of the sympathetic imagination. The social facet encourages good citizenship and allows humankind to behave in humane ways. It counters one’s private desire for mastery and balances self-interest with self-sacrifice; the sympathetic imagination helps others attain their goals and places others’ needs alongside one’s own selfishness. A sympathetic imagination is an essential quality in society, yet it will always yield only partial success. It cannot achieve complete success because truly inhabiting and embodying another living person is simply impossible, but in fiction, Coetzee explores the possibilities and limits of the sympathetic imagination at the level of language and metaphor. The other facet of the sympathetic imagination is often claimed by authors, poets, and artists to allow them to inhabit the subjects of their creativity. Coetzee tests the limits of authorial claims that writing is accomplished by applying a sympathetic imagination. In doing so, he creates metaphysical frames in which his own author-characters interact with other characters to reveal that some characters resist being written. In these metaphysical frames of fiction, Coetzee suggests that an author’s sympathetic imagination will never have total success; he sets forth a notion of partial success that helps address what is gained when the sympathetic imagination runs up against limits. My argument is that the authors and characters in these three novels attempt acts of sympathetic imagination and recurrently encounter limits. Coetzee questions perceived notions of authorship and the possibilities of the sympathetic imagination without offering alternatives. He critiques common notions of authorship and character writing but offers no real solutions.
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Pepera, Agnieszka. "Domínios semânticos na obra Disgrace de J. M. Coetzee e tradução." Master's thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10451/8791.
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Tese de mestrado, Tradução, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2012A presente dissertação consiste na aplicação dos domínios semânticos, área-chave da Semiótica Cognitiva (Brandt 2004; Brandt/ Brandt 2005), à análise de excertos de Disgrace da autoria de J.M. Coetzee e da sua tradução para Português Europeu, realizada por José Remelhe, com a revisão literária de Ana Maria Chaves, com o propósito de aquilatar em que medida o reconhecimento dos domínios semânticos, bem como a análise da sua estrutura interna, por parte do tradutor, é fundamental para a tradução da obra. A análise em domínios compreendeu ainda os casos de code-switching enquanto acervos paradigmáticos de diálogo intercultural. A escolha do corpus foi motivada, essencialmente, pelo enfoque temático das interseções interculturais em território sul-africano, no período pós-apartheid, em que as ordens simbólicas e práticas locais africanas colidem com ordens simbólicas e práticas dos ex-colonizadores, causando problemas de comunicação intercultural, passíveis de análise em domínios semânticos. Da análise dos domínios semânticos mais representativos no texto de partida em confronto com o texto de chegada resulta um acervo de questões de tradução, a partir do qual se pode avaliar a pertinência da aplicação de um paradigma semiótico-cognitivo à análise de textos de forte cunho intercultural.
ABSTRACT: The present dissertation deals with of the methodological application of semantic domains, core subject of Cognitive Semiotics (Brandt 2004; Brandt/ Brandt 2005), to the analysis of excerpts from “Disgrace” by J.M. Coetzee and their translation into European Portuguese by José Remelhe, with revision by Ana Maria Chaves, with the purpose of weighing the importance of semantic domain recognition and corresponding internal structure analysis for the translation process. Moreover, text samples of code-switching are focused upon in order to unveil paradigms of intercultural dialogue. The choice of corpus was primarily motivated by intercultural intersections in South Africa in the post- apartheid era, in which local African symbolic orders and practices collide with those of the former colonizers, resulting in intercultural communication issues, necessarily uncovered by semantic domain analysis. From the analysis of most representative semantic domains in the source text in comparison with the target text a bunch of translation issues emerge leading to the validation of the cognitive-semiotic paradigm as a significant tool for the analysis of texts with cross-cultural intersections.
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Mohammad, Malek Hardan. "The Discourse of Human Dignity and Techniques of Disempowerment: Giorgio Agamben, J. M. Coetzee, and Kazuo Ishiguro." Thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2010-12-8807.
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A multidisciplinary approach is needed to critique the frequently invoked but seldom questioned notion of "human dignity," a discursive tool that is subtly serving abusive power structures while seemingly promoting human rights. The discourse of human dignity misrepresents the meaning of empowerment for modern citizens, making them interested more in political gestures and less in profit, comfort and protection from abuse. Dignity‘s epistemes—self-assertion, recognition, political action, public-spiritedness, responsibility, resistance, the denial of animal instinct, sacrifice—should not be human ideals, for they are exactly the opposite of the sovereign‘s characteristics and because they are responsible for recursive violence that preserves the status quo. They should be replaced with ethics based on sensuous interest, instinct, and natural-spiritedness (a sense of mystical oneness with other living beings).
This dissertation answers Foucault‘s question about how the modern state endows citizens with a political subjectivity while simultaneously subjecting them to a totalized system, exposing human dignity as just the link between individuation and totalization. It questions Agamben‘s notion of the indistinction between political life and natural life, arguing that sovereign power, using the discourse of human dignity, creates a clear distinction. The human dignity discourse keeps the human within political life, representing such life as the middle point between the instinctive life of the animal and the mechanical life of the laborer. In reality, the dissertation shows, these two demonized modes of life are the same mode, which should be championed as a valuable and empowered state of being.
In the literary field, a close examination reveals that J. M. Coetzee‘s fiction subverts the human dignity discourse while Kazuo Ishiguro‘s work is enmeshed in it. Coetzee generates sympathy for humans who lack the sense of human dignity and act on mere instinct. He offers ―disgrace‖ as a spiritual-ethical state of sensuality, acceptance and humility and promotes an agenda of desire-based rights in lieu of dignity-based ones. His writings also eschew authorial dignity as they discount the values of newness and originality in favor of expression attuned to desire, even when such moves appear selfish and politically irresponsible.
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Nel, David. "Return to the farm : landscape as a site for the interrogation of identity in three works of J.M. Coetzee." Thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/3454.
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The dissertation focuses on 1. M. Coetzee's novels The Life and Times of Michael K., Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life and Disgrace, analysing the central protagonists' engagement with the landscape in general and specifically focussing on the farm as a site on which identities are interrogated. By way of introduction the two central themes, landscape
and identity are highlighted with respect to Coetzee's theoretical work, specifically White Writing and Doubling the Point. Introductory discussion on the 'farm novel' and 'autobiography' is also given in the first chapter.
In the second chapter, Boyhood is examined as an influential text in the rereading of Coetzee's allegorical work Michael K. The intention is to elucidate the power relations which underlie the earlier novel by means of a comparative analysis of the mother-child, father-child culture-child and author-text relationships found in Boyhood. Consideration of Coetzee's
critical analysis of Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm is given towards establishing links between Coetzee's fiction and the farm novel genre.
The third chapter focuses on Disgrace as 'another take' on the farm novel. The position of the white male 'self' in post-apartheid South Africa is interrogated through an analysis of the protagonist David Lurie's fictional' return to the farm.' 'Subject'/ 'other' relations are also discussed with a view to understanding identity formation. In the final chapter, conclusions are drawn regarding the relationship between Coetzee's fiction and the farm novel genre. Finally, the failure of lineal consciousness and the' self
becoming redundant are considered.Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg , 2002.
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Banasiak, Marta. "Os lugares do outro : representações das relações de poder na obra de João Paulo Borges Coelho e J. M. Coetzee." Doctoral thesis, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10451/41796.
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Projeto Os lugares do Outro: representações das relações de poder na obra de João Paulo Borges Coelho e J.M. Coetzee, ao comparar a obra do escritor moçambicano com o escritor sul-africano propõe introduzir um olhar diferente sobre a literatura moçambicana, geralmente estudada em comparação com outras literaturas de língua portuguesa. Pondera-se também a questão de como esta perspetiva comparativa possa participar na delimitação de um paradigma literário translinguístico da África Austral. A partir do enquadramento teórico baseado nas novas teorias de literatura(-)mundial inspiradas, por sua vez, em teorias económicas de sistema-mundo moderno, a tese reflete sobre as representações do poder social na obras dos dois autores mencionados no título, tendo em conta o papel do escritor enquanto intelectual e os projetos éticos autorais. A análise debruça-se sobre três blocos temáticos principais: tempo colonial, período pós-colonial (pós-apartheid no caso sul-africano) e as relações entre Estado e cidadão. O corpus analítico é formado por seis romances. Rainhas da Noite (2013) e In the Heart of the Country (1977) servem como material para dissecar o retrato das relações nas sociedades coloniais, enquanto Crónica da Rua 513.2 (2006) e Disgrace (1999), um laboratório das complexas relações da sociedade pós-colonial e suas interações com passado. No que se refere às relações entre Estado e cidadão, estas remetem para as práticas do poder bio-político desenvolvidas por estes dois estados africanos. Assim, nesta parte a análise concentra-se nos romances Campo de trânsito (2007) e Life & Times of Michael K (1983), unidos pelo espaço inóspito do campo de trabalho forçado. Na conclusão, ao retomar algumas das questões teóricas, destaca-se o compromisso intelectual dos escritores de narrar o mundo a partir do território africano.The project Places of the Other: Representations of Power Relations in the Work of João Paulo Borges Coelho and JM Coetzee, by comparing the works of the Mozambican and the South African writer, proposes to introduce a novel perspective in the study on Mozambican literature, generally studied in comparison with other Lusophone literatures. It also addresses the question of how such comparative perspective can contribute to the delimitation of a translinguistic literary paradigm of Southern Africa. Within a theoretical framework based on the new theories of world(-)literature inspired by economic theories of modern world system, the thesis reflects on the representations of social power in the works of the two above-mentioned authors, taking into account the role of the writer as intellectual and their ethical writing projects. The analysis is focused on three main the-matic blocks: colonial time, postcolonial period (post-apartheid in the South African case), and relations between the state and the citizen. The analytical corpus is formed by six novels. Rainhas da Noite (2013) and In the Heart of the Country (1977) serve as ma-terial for dissecting the portrayal of relationships in colonial societies, while Crónica da Rua 513.2 (2006) and Disgrace (1999), as a laboratory of the complex relations of post-colonial society and its interactions with the past. Regarding relations between the State and the citizen, these refer to the practices of bio-political power developed by these two African states. Thus, in this part the analysis is focused on the novels Campo de Trânsito (2007) and Life & Times of Michael K (1983), united by the inhospitable space of the forced labor camp. In conclusion, by resuming some of the theoretical issues, we highlight the writers’ intellectual commitment to narrate the world from African perspective.
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Ndumiso, Ncube. "Dismembering and re-membering in J.M. Coetzee's selected fiction: a decolonial approach." Diss., 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/25708.
Full textAbstract:
Text in EnglishAbstracts in English, Afrikaans and isiZulu
The present study deploys Ngugi wa Thiongo’s (2009) decolonial concepts of dismembering and re-membering to critically explore J. M Coetzee’s selected fiction. In my reading of the novels Waiting for the Barbarians, Foe and Disgrace, I relate concepts of dismembering and re-membering to decoloniality. In the rendition of Ngugi, dismembering refers to the displacement and dispossession of the colonised, and their mental colonisation through cultural imperialism. Re-membering becomes the decolonial effort to undo physical and psychological dismembering. In the same way in which, since the Berlin Conference of 1884/5, Africa was divided, mapped and colonised, the cultures and histories of Africans were dismembered and dominated. Concerns for the land are expressed in the mapping and the confiscation of land which is depicted in the native’s desert dwellings in Waiting for the Barbarians, Cruso’s clearing of the land in Foe and Petrus’s taking over of Lucy’s farm in Disgrace. Furthermore, Coetzee’s use of language is one important narrative strategy that is explored to ascertain how Coetzee negates or speaks for, of and about the colonised through the narrator focaliser. This study reveals the reflexive nature of the selected novels and seeks answers to the question of why Coetzee tends to make his “black” characters voiceless and rootless (and sometimes nameless)? Is Coetzee suggesting that they have been silenced by history, by colonialism, or is he suggesting that he, the author, has no right to speak on their behalf? In the mode of writing and story-telling, is Coetzee suggesting the impossibility of the coloniser to speak for the colonised or, in speaking of them, does he give the servant characters a voice and can this voice be theirs, or can it be considered reliable? Is Coetzee presenting the power of passivity as a means of resistance and re-membering? This study, from a decolonial perspective, engages with the complex way Coetzee handles voice and the question of the agency of the colonised.
Hierdie studie benut Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (2009) se dekoloniale begrippe van verdeling en herindeling in ʼn kritiese beskouing van J. M. Coetzee se geselekteerde fiksie. In my vertolking van die romans Waiting for the Barbarians, Foe en Disgrace, bring ek die begrippe van verdeling en herindeling in verband met dekolonialisme. In Ngũgĩ se vertolking verwys verdeling na die verplasing en onteiening van die gekoloniseerdes, en hul geestelike kolonisering deur kulturele imperialisme. Herindeling word die dekoloniale poging om fisiese en sielkundige herindeling ongedaan te maak. Op dieselfde manier wat Afrika verdeel, gekarteer en gekoloniseer is sedert die Berlynse Konferensie van 1884/5, is Afrikane se kulture en geskiedenisse verdeel en gedomineer. Kommer oor die grond word te kenne gegee in die kartering en konfiskering van grond – soos uitgebeeld in die boorling se woestynverblyf in Waiting for the Barbarians, Cruso se opruiming van die grond in Foe en Petrus se oorname van Lucy se plaas in Disgrace. Verder is Coetzee se taalgebruik ʼn belangrike verhalende strategie wat bestudeer word om vas te stel hoe Coetzee die gekoloniseerde ontken of vir, van en oor die gekoloniseerde praat deur middel van die verteller/fokaliseerder. Hierdie studie openbaar die refleksiewe aard van die geselekteerde romans en soek vir antwoorde op die vraag van waarom Coetzee geneig is om sy “swart” karakters stemloos en wortelloos (en soms, naamloos) te maak. Suggereer Coetzee dat hulle deur die geskiedenis, deur kolonialisme, stilgemaak is – of suggereer hy dat hy, die outeur, nie die reg het om namens hulle te praat nie? Wil Coetzee deur sy manier van skryf en vertelling, aan die hand doen dat dit onmoontlik is dat die koloniseerder vir die gekoloniseerde kan praat; of, wanneer hy van hulle praat, gee hy aan die dienaarkarakters ʼn stem en kan dit hulle stem wees, of kan dit as betroubaar beskou word? Hou Coetzee die kraag van passiwiteit voor as ʼn vorm van weerstand en herindeling? Hierdie studie ondersoek, vanuit ʼn dekoloniale perspektief, die komplekse wyse waarop Coetzee stem en die vraag van die tussenkoms van die gekoloniseerde hanteer.
Ucwaningo lwamanje luchitha imiqondo ka-Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (2009) yokuqothula nokujoyina kabusha ukungabuswa ngelinye izwe ekuhloliseni ngokucophelela ukuqamba okukhethiwe kukaJ.M. Coetzee. Ekufundeni kwami amanoveli i-Waiting for the Barbarians, Foe and Disgrace, ngichaza imiqondo yokuqothula futhi ukujoyina kabusha ekungabusweni ngelinye izwe. Ekuhumusheni kuka-Ngũgĩ, ukuqothula kubhekisela ekufudukeni nasekuthunjweni kwalabo ababuswa ngelinye izwe, kanye nengqondo yabo ekubusweni ngelinye izwe ngokusebenzisa imiphakathi yamasiko. Ukujoyina kabusha kuba wumzamo wokungabuswa ngelinye izwe ukulungisa ukuqothula kokukhubazeka ngokomzimba nangokwengqondo. Ngendlela efanayo lapho i-Afrika ihlukaniswe ngakhona, ihlelwe ibalazwe futhi ibuzwa ngelinye izwe kusukela kwiNgqungquthela yaseBerlin ka 1884/5, amasiko kanye nemilando yabantu base-Afrika yaqothulwa futhi yabuswa. Ukukhathazeka kwezwe kuboniswa ebalazweni nasekuthunjweni komhlaba - njengoba kuboniswe ezindaweni zokuhlala zasogwadule ku- Waiting for the Barbarians, ku-Cruso ukuhlanzwa komhlaba-enovelini i-Foe nakuPetrus ukuthatha ipulazi likaLucy enovelini i-Disgrace. Ngaphezu kwalokho, ukusetshenziswa kolimi lukaCoetzee kuyisisindo esisodwa esibalulekile sokulandisa esihlolisiswayo ukuze kuqinisekiswe ukuthi uCozezee uphikisa kanjani noma ukhuluma kanjani, futhi mayelana nababuswa ngelinye izwe ngokusebenzisa umlandisi. Lolu cwaningo lwembula uhlobo oluthile lokucabanga lwamanoveli akhethiwe futhi lufuna izimpendulo embuzweni wokuthi kungani uCoetzee ejwayele ukwenza "abalingisi" bakhe abamnyama bengabonakali futhi bangenasisekelo (futhi ngezinye izikhathi abangenalo igama). Ingabe uCoetzee uphakamisa ukuthi baye bathuliswa ngumlando, ngukubuswa ngelinye izwe, noma ingabe uphakamisa ukuthi yena, umbhali, akanalo ilungelo lokukhuluma egameni labo? Ngendlela yokubhala nokuxoxa ngezindaba, ingabe uCoetzee uphakamisa ukuthi akunakwenzeka ukuba obusa elinye izwe akhulumele ababuswayo kulelo zwe noma, uma ekhuluma ngabo, uyabanika abalingiswa abayinceku izwi futhi leli zwi lingaba ngelabo, noma lingathathwa njengelethembekile? Ingabe uCoetzee uveza amandla okungahambisani njengendlela yokumelana nokujoyina kabusha? Lolu cwaningo, kusukela embonweni wokungabuswa ngelinye izwe, luhambisana nendlela eyinkimbinkimbi uCoetzee alawula izwi kanye nombuzo wokumela ababuswayo.
English Studies
M.A. (Theory of Literature: (English Studies))
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Dent, Jacqueline Elizabeth May. "Exploring the construction of white male identity in selected novels by J.M. Coetzee." Diss., 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/1583.
Full textAbstract:
Coetzee's own experience of living in apartheid South Africa provides the backdrop for novels infused with sardonic irony and rich metaphoric systems. In modes of metafiction that emphasize the destructive and violent nature of language, he optimizes his unique oeuvre to interrogate global, national and domestic power relations. This dissertation relies on psychoanalytical theories that examine microstructures of power within the individual, and in his domestic domain. Each of Coetzee's chief protagonists carries a secret related to a dysfunctional mother/son relationship. This hampers their psychosocial dynamics, their masculinity and sexuality. As they respectively strive toward an elusive new life they confront patriarchal power structures that speak on behalf of individuals, '[whose] descent into powerlessness [is] voluntary' (Coetzee 2007: 4-5). Coetzee's constructed white males perform their several identity roles in milieux that span divergent phases of colonial history. His critique points to white patriarchal hegemonic ideological discourses that bespeak the self/other dichotomy in a postcolonial world where the language of dominance supports an oppressive status quo.English Studies
M.A. (English)
38
Joubert, Martha Margaretha. "The representation of the farm in three South African novels : Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African farm; Pauline Smith's The Beadle; and J.M. Coetzee's In the heart of the country." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10210/10315.
Full textAbstract:
M.A. (English)In the following dissertation, the literary representation of the farm in Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (18%3), Smith's The Beadle (1926), and Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country (1976) will be examined under two main categories. The first is the treatment of the farm landscape, or the specifically '* South African version of the pastoral myth. The second, and interrelated category, is the stereotypic vision that originated around the inhabitants of the South African farm. In both categories the focus will fallon the stereotypes of both land and inhabitants that existed at the time that Schreiner and Smith wrote, and the ways in which these stereotypes were used, modified, or expanded by these two authors. In the final chapter I shall examine Coetzee' s ironic use of these stereotypes, especially those that were created around the farm landscape during the nineteenth century.