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Confrontation and Identity in the Fiction of J.M. Coetzee

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Edith Cowan University Research Online Theses: Doctorates and Masters Theses 1-1-1999 Confrontation and identity in the fiction of J.M. Coetzee Dawn Grieve Edith Cowan University Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Grieve, D. (1999). Confrontation and identity in the fiction of J.M. Coetzee. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/ 1246 This Thesis is posted at Research Online. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1246 Edith Cowan University Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorize you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: Copyright owners are entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. A reproduction of material that is protected by copyright may be a copyright infringement. Where the reproduction of such material is done without attribution of authorship, with false attribution of authorship or the authorship is treated in a derogatory manner, this may be a breach of the author’s moral rights contained in Part IX of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Courts have the power to impose a wide range of civil and criminal sanctions for infringement of copyright, infringement of moral rights and other offences under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Higher penalties may apply, and higher damages may be awarded, for offences and infringements involving the conversion of material into digital or electronic form. USE OF THESIS The Use of Thesis statement is not included in this version of the thesis. CONFRONTATION AND IDENTITY IN THE FICTION OF J. M. COETZEE By Dawn Grieve A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the award of Master of Arts, English (Year Two) Dawn Grieve M. A. (Eng) (Year One) Faculty of Arts Edith Cowan Uni•.-ersity Date of Submission: August, 1999 ii ABSTRACT This thesis is an examination of the fictional works of J.M. Coctzce to date. By focusing my gaze upon either the lack of encounter or the encounters between the 'Self' and the 'Other', I explore the relationship between confrontation and the fluid fonnation and erosion of identity. This exploration takes place against a dual background: the history of the apartheid government in South Africa, the legacy of oppression and the post-apartheid opportunities and challenges; and Coetzee's own acknowledgement of complicity with the past and commitment to a reconciled future. This study not only examines a broad range of criticism on Coetzee but also provides an integrated response to Coetzee's own writing, both fictional and non­ fictional. A crack or flaw is revealed in the identity of each of the main characters in the texts. These aporias resist interrogation and establish what l perceive to be a metafictional objective. The limitations of rational engagement are eloquently represented in Coetzee's novels in the presence of the suffering body. It is the iii 1 aim of this thesis to trace a trajectory which begins in this metalingual space and leads to a metaphysical challenge to Western philosophical tradition. On close textual scrutiny of three of the novels: In the Heart of the Country, Age of Iron and The Master of Petersburg, I have identified widening cracks in the identities of the protagonists. Using a metaphor of leakage, it is my thesis that these gaps offer creative opportunities of sharing which dissolve judgement and allow for imaginative understanding of otherness. This study is then read back into Coetzee's world. It reaffirms the sigoificance of his voice locally and globally, both in the academy and society. I concur with most recent comment that Coetzee's fiction transgresses critical containment and offers metafictional extension to post-colonial theories. This thesis synthesises some of this current debate. The ethical implications of his work are also extended in this thesis, by hononring his commitment to self-scrutiny throughout the novel sequence and in his personal confession in Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life. In the specific narratives of his characters and the stories from his own past, he provides iv fragments of hope which transcend the confines of all discourse. I conclude that his example invites and encourages a brave response. v DECLARATION I rerticy that this thesis does not incorporate without acknowledgement any material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any institution of higher education; and that to the best of my knowledge and belief it does not contain any material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text. Signature Date 22-02..-2000 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My principal thanks are to my supervisor, Dr Jill Durey. She provided essential encouragement and an education in scholarship. I would also like to thank my family: Tom, Bronwyn, Mary-Anne and Peter for their support. vii A NOTE ON THE THESIS Where the texts of J.M. Coctzce arc quoted within the body of the thesis, references have been abbreviated as follows: 1974 Dusklands (D) 1982 Waiting for the Barbarians (WB) 1982 In the Heart of the Country (IHC) 1985 Life and Times of Michael K (MK) 1987 Foe (E) 1988 White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (WW) 1991 Age of Iron (A!) 1992 Doubling the Point, Essays and Interviews: J. M. Coetzee (DP) 1994 The Master of Petersburg (MP) 1996 Giving Offense (GO) 1997 Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (!!) 1999 The Lives of Animals (LA) viii TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION I. I. The Master Player 2 1.2. The Game of Transgression 8 II. ENCOUNTERS WITH THE OTHER 2. The 'I' confronts the 'You' I I 2.1. Local Reality, Global Theory 15 2.2. Eluding the Restrictions of His Historic Positioning 22 2.3. Signs ofldentity 27 3. Stoksielalleen 30 3.1. Confronting the Other, Negating the Self 32 3.2. The Aporia of the Other 38 3.3. Beyond Resistance 43 Ill. CORPOREALITY 4. The Physical 52 4.1. The Mind Confronts the Body 54 4.2. The Damaged Body 56 5. The Political Body 59 5.I. Confronting the Censor 61 5.2. Relinquishing the Idea to the Evidence of the Body 66 5. 3. The Mirroring of the Suffering Body 73 5.4. The Threat ofEntropic Inertia 79 IV. DESIRE 6. Physical Intimacy 86 6.1. Desire for Identity 88 6.2. Evading the Desire ofthe Other 99 6.3. Desire, Transgression and the Law 106 ix V. LEAKAGE BETWEEN lllENTITIES 7. Merging ldtntities 118 7. I. How Real is Our Possession? !28 7.2. Embracing the Margin !39 7.3. The Detective Game: Merging and Separating Motives !50 7.4. Confronting Differences Or the Similarity of Difference !64 VI. THE PRICE AND THE PRIZE OF BETRAYAL 8. A Writer Confronts his World 168 8. I. Eluding the Binary 177 8.2. Either History or Fiction? 179 8.3. The Post-Colonizer-As-Writer !85 8.4. A Space for Women 191 9. The Insignificant Angles ofthe World Reflected 195 9. I. The Author's challenge to the Censor in the Mirror Or The Public Confession of a Most Private Life 201 VH. CONCLUSION I 0. The Value of the Game 207 BIDLIOGRAPHY 211 SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION 2 I. THE MASTER PLAYER J.M. Coetzee occupies a unique, intermediary position as a white South African, a professor of literature and a writer-as-critic (Head, 1997, pp. 1-24). His gaze encompasses both the local and global history, the current debates on cultural and literary theory Jnd the critical comment on his writing. This thesis argues that it is in the encounters between the 'Self and the 'Other' in his novels that Coetzee enacts his response to these three discursive arenas. In a dual trajectory I shall examine the implications of confrontation upon the formation of identity and then I shall trace these findings into Coetzee's metafictional enterprise in his oeuvre to date. There is slippage between non-fiction and fiction in Coetzee's work. Historica1 events and social realities inform his fiction, which can then be read back into society and the academy. This elision of his non-fictional, fictional and metafictional task is enunciated by Mrs Costello, the protagonist of his latest novella, The Lives of Animals. Coetzee recently presented the Tanner lecture at Princeton University. His lecture took the form of a postmodem fable: a fictional account of a lecture delivered by an ageing Australian author, Elizabeth Costello is embedded in Coetzee's delivery. This has become the content of his latest book. Costello addresses her audience thus: "Yet, although I see that the best way to win acceptance from this learned gathering would be for me to join myself, like a tributary stream running into a great river, to the great Western discourse of man versus beast, of reason versus unreason, something in me resists, foreseeing in that step the concession of the entire battle. 3 "For, seen from the outside, from a being who is alien to it, reason is simply a vast tautology. Of course reason will validate reason as the first principle of the universe - what else should it do? Dethrone itselr? - - . If there were a position from which reason could attack and dethrone itself, reason would already have occupied that position." (LA, p. 25) Costello echoes Coetzee's own novelistic project. Coetzee installs the various forms of confrontation between identities in order to explore the consequences. But I suggest that it is in a fourth, overarching field of vision that Coetzee undertakes to resist such Manichaean understandings.
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