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'So I Sing for My Keep': Jm Coetzee and Confessional Narrative Maria

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'So I Sing for My Keep': Jm Coetzee and Confessional Narrative Maria 'SO I SING FOR MY KEEP': J. M. COETZEE AND CONFESSIONAL NARRATIVE MARIA MICHELLE KELLY PHD THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & RELATED LITERATURE SEPTEMBER 2008 ABSTRACT The thesis traces Coetzee's career-long interest in confessional narrative in order to deepenand expand understandingof the scopeof his engagementwith the form. This involves mapping the reach of his engagementwith confession across his career as writer, translator and teacher,and drawing on previously unexplored archive material from the National English Literary Museum in Grahamstown, South Africa. In a series of chapters which cover his writing up to the autobiographical volumes Boyhood and Youth, as well as the recent Diary of a Bad Year, the thesis explores Coetzee's relationship to the literary history within which he self-consciously positions himself, the extent to which his relationship to the context in which he was writing is mediated through confessional narrative, and the intimate connection betweenthe dynamics of confessionand the writing processitself. The thesis argues that there is a fundamental discontinuity in Coetzee's thinking on confession as the conditions, rituals, forms, genres and conventions through which confession must proceed- and which he describesand stagesin great detail in his essays,fiction and memoirs - cannot by definition deliver the truth and absolution that is the ideal end for all confession. Instead, we have repeated and varied attempts to stage successful confessions or indeed to make successful confessions,almost all of which fail. Confessional narrative is normally taken to represent a potentially shameful truth avowed in the presence of another person which will lead to absolution, forgiveness or transformation - and it represents all of these things in Coetzee. However, the desire for successful confession also lends itself to a goal-oriented, instrumental narrative that is characterisedby self-interest. This is irreconcilable with the secular versions of absolution and forgiveness which Coetzeedescribes in terms of grace and which seem to indicate an ethical orientation toward the other. So while confession is described as part of a teleology leading from transgression to absolution, there is a fundamental discontinuity in this teleology suggestingthat the desire or will for truth cannot in itself lead to a successfulconfession. This discontinuity resonateswith the reconception of speech act theory that takes place across a range of texts by Jacques Derrida. In 'Composing Circumfession,' Derrida admits that while he had always been sceptical about the processesof speech act theory, his interest in the field emerged from a belief that performative speech acts can produce events. But his parallel thinking on the aneconomic gift is a reconception of this model, to the extent that confession shifts from being emblematic of a certain kind of performative utteranceto being structured along the lines of the gift - with the aleatory, contingent qualities that this implies. But if the event of a successfulconfession cannot by definition be brought about by the conditions governing performative utterances, similar to the discontinuity in Coetzee's thinking on confession, the rituals of confession - the avowal of responsibility and expression of remorse - remain the only way to prepare oneself and open oneself to the possibility of the event. This discontinuity translatesin Coetzee's fiction into a desire for forgiveness and transformation enacted through repeated willed encounters with marginalised figures, which are very often failed confessions. These repeated, failed transformations indicate the desire for truth, absolution and forgiveness- the end of disingenuousness the episode of confession - but also the inadequacyor the of the 2 desire for truth in the face of powerful competing interests. This has particular repercussionsfor Coetzeethe writer: if confessionis inherently self-interested,then it brings his interestsas a writer into direct conflict with the seemingly ethical demands of the confession. Few places have experiencedthe need for performative speechacts to produce eventsmore keenly than South Africa and the urgency of this need informs Coetzee's engagement with confession - both the desire for truth and absolution and the scepticism about this desire that is evident in his work. The thesis traces the way in which Coetzee's engagementwith confession responds to the changing demandsof this context. It describes Coetzee's influential 1985 essay 'Confession and Double Thoughts' as an 'interregnum' text and its teleology of confession as an attempt to navigate through the constraints of a current crisis to the promise of an imagined future; its scepticism reflects the difficulties of such a task. But in the post-apartheid context, when 'transformation' is a matter of governmentpolicy, attemptsto engineer reconciliation by limiting the scope of what justice is available - while continuous with the always instrumental bent of confessionaldiscourse - are the focus of critique by Coetzee. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments 5 Introduction: Approaching 'the idea of the truth' 6 1 The Limits of Confessional Discourse 24 2 'Character Is fate': The Confessional Genre in Dusklands and In the Heart of the Country 55 3 'Anything was possible': Transformation, Repetition and Contingency In Waitingfor the Barbarians and Life & Times of Michael K 98 it is Confession 4 'A private matter ... till given to the world': as a Figure for Authorship In Foe and The Master ofPetersburg 136 5 'Nothing is private anymore': Confession, Performance and the Reinvention of the Private in Age ofIron and Disgrace 199 6 'Two worlds tightly sealed'?: Autobiography and Fiction in Boyhood and Youth 234 Conclusion: Diary ofa Bad Year 284 Bibliography 289 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This researchwas generously funded by a Travelling Studentshipin English from the National University of Ireland. Travel grants from the Roberts Fund and the Leavis Fund in the Department of English at York funded a researchtrip to South Africa. While I was there, the help and guidance of Ann Torless and Andrew Martin contributed to a very productive visit to the National English Literary Museum in Grahamstown, and I am grateful to John Coetzee for granting permission to quote from some of the papers I viewed. Thanks also to Tim Bewes, Elleke Boehmer, ShaunIrlam and Michael Neill for sharing their forthcoming or unpublishedwork. The thesis was supervisedby Derek Attridge and I am deeply grateful to him for his time, for his interest in the project, for insightful and challenging comments and questions along the way, and for guiding the project to its conclusion with patience and encouragement. Thanks to David Attwell for his exacting and insightful comments as thesis panel member, and also for his support for the project and generosity with materials from his invaluable Coetzee archive. I would also like to thank John Bowen, Laura Chrisman and Richard Walsh for their comments and questionsat various points. In spite of long absences,Galway continuesto feel like home thanks to the friendship and hospitality of Vinny Browne, Eimear Butler, Cliodhna Flavin, Joan Grant, Jane Grogan and, from her Italian outpost, Lucia Nicoletti. In York, welcome distraction and stimulation came in the company of Alfonso Donoso, Matthew Gaughan, Kate Highman, Michaei Kearney, Liani Lochner, Bryan Radley, Deborah Russell, Jen Van Viiet and Alex Watson. Thanks to Sarah SheenaI had a roof over my head and a great desk to work at for the final weeks of writing. For their friendship, distractions and sustenance,I will always be grateful to my fellow residents at 70 St Paul's Terrace: Erika Baldt, Mary Fairclough, Estefania Guimaraes, Sophie Bouvaine, Rodrigo Vega Bernal and Georges Bradley Bouvaine. For acting as cook, proof- readerand cheerleaderto the very end, Mary Fairclough deservesa medal. Thanks to my family and extended family, especially Cathy O'Connell, who make their presencefelt wherever I am. For never taking me seriously, or letting me take myself too seriously, special thanks to my siblings, Lorraine, Donna, Michael, Alan, Sandra and Sin6ad. My parents, Michael and Sally Kelly, have provided unconditional support for this and every other project I've undertakenand I hope that I will eventually find a way to thank them. In the meantime,the thesis is for them and for two inspirational ladies - my grandmothers, Kathleen McVeigh and Eileen O'Connell. INTRODUCTION Approaching "the idea of the truth": Coetzee and Confession I In the closing interview of Doubling the Point, J. M. Coetzee describes his 1985 essay 'Confession and Double Thoughts: Tolstoy, Rousseau, Dostoevsky'l as 'pivotal' insofar as it marks 'the beginning of a more broadly philosophical engagementwith a situation in the world' (394). Suggestingthat the essay be read alongside Waitingfor the Barbarians (1980), Coetzeecomments: The novel asks the question: Why does one choose the side of justice when it is not in one's material interest to do so? The Magistrate gives the rather Platonic answer: becausewe are born with the idea of justice. The essay, if only implicitly, asks the question: Why should I be interestedin the truth about myself when the truth may not be in my interest? To which, I suppose,I continue to give a Platonic answer: because we are born with the idea of the truth. (394-95) In setting transcendentnotions of justice and truth against self-interest, Coetzee is pointing to a certain idealism in his
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