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‘Wooden Man’?: Masculinities in the Work of J. M. Coetzee (Boyhood, Youth and Summertime) Daniel Filipe Mendes Matias Doctoral Thesis in Modern Languages, Cultures and Literatures Specialisation: Cultural Studies December, 2015 1 Tese apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Doutor em Línguas, Culturas e Literaturas Modernas / Especialização em Estudos Culturais, realizada sob a orientação científica de Professora Doutora Teresa Pinto Coelho e Professor Doutor Pedro Aires de Oliveira The author wishes to acknowledge the Portuguese funding institution FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia – for supporting the present research, through a PhD scholarship (SFRH/BD/77855/2011). iii v To Maria Mendes, (Grand)Mother, Teacher, Friend vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I should like to thank Professor Teresa Pinto Coelho. I first met Professor Teresa in my endless quest for more knowledge and a more detailed, complex notion of the world that we inhabit. The memory of this meeting is clear to me, as I remember how in a rainy afternoon, Professor Teresa, with her usual energy and enthusiasm, gave a class to very attentive students on the intricacies of the questions posed by postcolonial studies. Interestingly, alongside its academic substance, my memory is mostly centred on the physical aspects of the event, as I recall Professor Teresa opening her arms widely and concluding – always with a question and, familiarly, with an intellectual provocation – on the myriad of possibilities of reading, of research, of understanding. This ample gesture, indicating openness and not closure, braving darkness and yet also suspicious of too easy a light, resonated in me as a possible promise of looking at the world anew. Such gusto would, in large part, animate this work, supporting me through the trials and tribulations, the excesses and doubts that necessarily accompanied it. Oftentimes, amidst the regular anxieties that necessarily permeate a work of this magnitude, I would recall the aforementioned scene, and the meaningful promise I saw in it. Indeed, faced with such a promise, with such an invitation, how could I do otherwise? I would also like to thank Professor Pedro Aires de Oliveira, whose belief in the present work has been constant and whose helpful guidance proved safe harbor amidst stormy seas. I have learned, with the carefulness and the detail of the historian, to pay attention not only to the past but, perhaps mostly, to the future. To both Professor Teresa and Professor Pedro I should like to thank their endless support and understanding, cognisant as I am of a debt I can never repay. Language, notwithstanding its richness, oftentimes fails in the most crucial of moments, especially when one is seeking to portray, in meaningful ways, one’s recognition. As such, one hopes that a ‘thank you’ may be read as harbouring a universe in itself. The time I spent at the Psychosocial Studies Department at Birkbeck College, University of London, was a dream long harboured. I should like to thank Professor Lynne Segal and Professor Stephen Frosh for their insightful comments, and many motivating discussions. To meet many of the people whose work I have long admired, ix and that has played such an important part in my own intellectual development, was a moment I cherish. As such, I should also like to thank Professor Lisa Baraitser and Professor Derek Hook for their ideas and opinions. I should like to thank Professor Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, whose work and efforts I have long admired. I was privileged to receive her comments on this work in its initial phase, and the insights I have drawn from that moment have played a crucial part in creating the final work. I should like to acknowledge the IHC – Instituto de História Contemporânea – for harbouring the present work and providing me with an exciting, intellectually stimulating community. I have also been fortunate in being a part of Faces de Eva, whose academic research on the issues pertaining to gender and women’s history has long harboured my interests in the field. I should especially like to thank Professor Zília Osório de Castro, whose friendship and understanding are truly treasured. I would like to thank Dr. Alaine Low, for her hospitality during my visits to Oxford. I would like to extend my gratitude to Peter Davis, at Villon films in Canada, who kindly allowed me access to several films on Afrikaner nationalism. My gratitude goes also to Gerald Christopher Rebelo, for teaching me basic Afrikaans, and for our lenghty discussions on Afrikaner culture and politics. A special acknowledgement to the librarians at the BNP – Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal –, especially Maria Elisa Gaudêncio Soares, whose aid regarding interlibrary loans was so very necessary to the present research. I should also like to thank the Portuguese funding institution FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia – for supporting the present work through a PhD scholarship (SFRH/BD/77855/2011). Finally, I would like to thank my parents. Without their continued support, none of this would be possible. x ‘Wooden Man’?: Masculinities in the work of J. M. Coetzee (Boyhood, Youth and Summertime) Daniel Filipe Mendes Matias In seeking to advance the possibility of justice, gender and postcolonial studies have argued for the importance of the study of masculinities, through the acknowledgment that a richer understanding of such gendered formations may provide the basis for recognition of the Other and that, left uncriticised, such formations may be continuously delineated by the reproduction of systems of domination. The current study finds as its object the representations of masculinities in J. M. Coetzee’s Boyhood (1997), Youth (2002) and Summertime (2009). As works of transition in terms of Coetzee’s oeuvre - post-apartheid and post-Disgrace - the trilogy provides an account of the development of a man through several stages of life. While portraying the tensions of different geographical and cultural locations, such as apartheid South Africa and the London of the Sixties, the trilogy articulates the various norms that impact in the formation of gender, particularly of masculinities, through a complex system of power relations. The adherence to such norms is never linear, as the trilogy provides imaginative accounts of the contradictions that assist in the formulation of gender, depicting both the allure and the terror that constitute hegemonic masculinity. Located in the intersection of gender and postcolonial studies, the present study is based on the works by Raewyn Connell on masculinities. Animated by such a critical framework, the main research question of the present study is whether the trilogy advances a notion of masculinity that differs from the traditional rigid model, that is, whether there is resistance to hegemonic masculinity and what the spaces inhabited by the subaltern are. It is suggested that the trilogy presents the reader with instances of resistance to normative formulations of masculinity, by contrasting domination with the possibility of justice, and advancing an understanding of the often fatal consequences of gender norms to one’s sense of being in the world. Keywords: Masculinities, J. M. Coetzee, Hegemony, Postcolonialism, Gender xi “Wooden Man”?: Masculinidades na Obra de J. M. Coetzee (Boyhood, Youth e Summertime) Daniel Filipe Mendes Matias Na sua promoção da possibilidade de justiça, os estudos de género e (pós-) coloniais têm insistido na importância dos estudos sobre masculinidades, avançando a premissa de que uma compreensão mais aturada e sofisticada de tais formulações de género poderá conduzir a uma base progressivamente sólida no sentido do reconhecimento do Outro e de que a ausência de crítica nesta área implicará a contínua reprodução de tais formulações no âmbito de sistemas de dominação. A presente investigação tem como objecto de estudo as masculinidades representadas nas seguintes obras de J. M. Coetzee: Boyhood (1997), Youth (2002) e Summertime (2009). Em termos da obra de Coetzee, a trilogia localiza-se num momento de transição - post-apartheid e post-Disgrace – compreendendo a formação de um sujeito masculino através das várias fases da sua vida. Representando as várias tensões presentes em diferentes localizações geográficas e culturais, tais como a era do apartheid na África do Sul ou a Londres dos anos sessenta, a trilogia articula as várias normas que presidem à formação de género, em particular das masculinidades, através de um sistema complexo de relações de poder. A adesão a tais normas escapa a uma suposta linearidade, uma vez que a trilogia constrói representações imaginativas das contradições que assistem à formação de género, expondo quer fascínio, quer terror face à masculinidade hegemónica. Na intersecção dos estudos de género e (pós-) coloniais, o presente estudo baseia-se conceptualmente nos trabalhos de Raewyn Connell sobre masculinidades. Face a tal pensamento crítico, e em termos do argumento central do presente estudo, procura-se compreender se a trilogia avança uma noção de masculinidade diferente do tradicional modelo rígido, isto é, se será possível encontrar resistência a uma formulação hegemónica da masculinidade, ao mesmo tempo que interrogamos quais os espaços habitados pelo subalterno. Sugerimos que a trilogia apresenta possibilidades de resistência a formulações normativas da masculinidade, ao contrastar dominação com possibilidade de justiça, apresentando as consequências geralmente fatais