Confrontation and Identity in the Fiction of J.M. Coetzee
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“This place being South Africa”: Reading race, sex and power in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace by Kimberly Chou “This place being South Africa”: Reading race, sex and power in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace by Kimberly Chou A thesis presented for the B.A. degree with Honors in The Department of English University of Michigan Spring 2009 © Kimberly Chou 16 March 2009 For fellow readers who have picked up this deeply provocative novel and found themselves at its close with more questions than answers—and for those who have yet to join the conversation. Acknowledgements I am indebted to my advisor, Jennifer Wenzel, for her guidance, patience and forthright criticism. Thank you for challenging me to challenge myself, and for sharing great appreciation for the work of J.M. Coetzee and, most importantly, a love of South Africa. Thank you to Cathy Sanok and Andrea Zemgulys, for unwavering support throughout the thesis-writing process. Thank you to the 2009 English honors thesis cohort for creating a space of encouragement and commiseration. Thank you to the peers and professors at the University of Cape Town who influenced early development of this project. A special thank you to Obs Books in Observatory, Cape Town. Thank you to my family and friends, who have, at this point, likely heard more about the ethics of reading and the politics of place than they had ever wished. Sincere thanks to M.M., F.R., E.M. and J.N. for their honesty and advice. Abstract Whatever discourse J.M. Coetzee intended to arouse with Disgrace, his 1999 novel that addresses changing social dynamics in post-apartheid South Africa, the conversation it has inspired since its publication has been dominated by readers’ suspicions. -
A Comparative Study of Robinson Crusoe and Foe
Journal of Foreign Languages, Cultures and Civilizations December 2020, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 20-24 ISSN 2333-5882 (Print) 2333-5890 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: 10.15640/jflcc.v8n2a3 URL: https://doi.org/10.15640/jflcc.v8n2a3 His-Story and Her-Story: A Comparative Study of Robinson Crusoe and Foe Dr. Shakira Khatoon1, Prof. M. Asim Siddiqui2 & Prof. Nazia Hasan3 Abstract History is often said to be his-story owing to it being exclusively written by men about men. It consists of heroic as well as tragic tales of men, heroic and tragic both terms being exploited by Aristotle in the context of men again. Literature of any nation or language is also History per se as it reflects the ethos of the time in which it is created, and can also be called His-story because of dominant presence of male voices on the literary horizon for centuries. It is only after the surge of movements and theories like Feminism and Postcolonialism, that Her-story started to surface up in literary works. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (first published in 1719) and Foe by J. M. Coetzee (rewriting of Robinson Crusoe, first published in 1986) are the two works showcasing this transition in focus from His-story to Her-story. Whereas one tells the story of a male castaway Robinson Crusoe who turns out to be a powerful, colonial patriarch, completely avoiding the existence of woman; the other tells the story of Susan Barton, a female castaway introduced by Coetzee into the world of Crusoe (Cruso here). -
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (1993) - Not Even Past
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (1993) - Not Even Past BOOKS FILMS & MEDIA THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN BLOG TEXAS OUR/STORIES STUDENTS ABOUT 15 MINUTE HISTORY "The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner NOT EVEN PAST Tweet 0 Like THE PUBLIC HISTORIAN Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth (1993) Making History: Houston’s “Spirit of the by Robert A. Olwell Confederacy” Sacred Hunger, a novel by Barry Unsworth (which was awarded the 1992 Booker Prize) is the story of a single ship and a single voyage. The novel begins in 1752, in Liverpool, England. The Royal African Company, a chartered corporation created in the mid- 17th-century with a monopoly on trade with the African coast, has just lost the last of its privileges, making the slave trade, for the first time, a “free trade” (all irony intended). Inspired by the promise of lucrative profits, a May 06, 2020 Liverpool merchant, William Kemp, commissions the construction of a ship to engage in the newly opened More from The Public Historian trade. Before the ship sets sail, Kemp engages his nephew, Matthew Paris, a disgraced apothecary, to serve as the ship’s surgeon. BOOKS In the scales of Kemp’s complacent morality, his good America for Americans: A History of deed in “saving” Paris, will be amply repaid in the Xenophobia in the United States by healthier and more valuable slaves that his ship will be Erika Lee (2019) able to sell once it reaches America. This fictional view closely mirrors that of Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote that masters who spared pregnant slave women from field labor were wise as well as kind, for “a child raised every 2 years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring man.” To Jefferson, this happy equation revealed the hand of an enlightened creator in making “our interest and our duties coincide perfectly.” April 20, 2020 In the chapters that follow the ship’s arrival on the African coast, Unsworth vividly and accurately describes the painstaking and painful process by which a slave ship “made” a cargo in the mid-18th- More Books century. -
Summertime (David Attwell)
Trauma, Memory and Narrative in the Contemporary South African Novel Abstracts “ To speak of this you would need the tongue of a god” : On Representing the Trauma of Township Violence (Derek Attridge) It is winter, 1986, on the Cape Flats, and the elderly white lady finds that she cannot produce words equal to the horror of the scene she is witnessing in the shantytown, where the shacks of the inhabitants are being burned by vigilantes. In J. M. Coetzee’s 1990 novel Age of Iron, the author himself does, of course, describe the scene, reflecting in his choice of language Mrs Curren’s familiarity with classical literature and its accounts of traumatic events. It is an outsider’s description, evincing bafflement as well as shock. For what we are invited to read as an insider’s description of a similar scene occurring ten years earlier, we can turn to The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena, Elsa Joubert’s transcription/rewriting of a black woman’s experiences as narrated to her over a twoyear period and first published in Afrikaans in 1978. This paper will compare the narrative strategies of the two authors in attempting to represent the trauma of township violence – marked not just by savage actions but by confusion as to who is friend and who is enemy – and consider the theoretical implications of their choices. Trauma Refracted: J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime (David Attwell) J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime completes a cycle of autobiographical fictions which begins with Boyhood and continues with Youth. In the third and most recent of these works, the protagonist begins publishing his early fiction. -
Age of Iron in the Heart of the Cou1ttry Waiting for the Ba.Rbcm'ans Life & Times of Michael K Foe J.M
By th.e same author • • Dusklands Age of Iron In the Heart of the Cou1ttry Waiting for the Ba.rbcm'ans Life & Times of Michael K Foe J.M. COETZ,EE Seeker & Warburg London By th.e same author • • Dusklands Age of Iron In the Heart of the Cou1ttry Waiting for the Ba.rbcm'ans Life & Times of Michael K Foe J.M. COETZ,EE Seeker & Warburg London First published in Great Britain in 1990 For by Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited Michelin House, 81 .Fulham Road, London SWJ 6RB V.H.M..C. (1904-1985) z.c. (1912-1988) Copyright© 1990].. M. Coetzee N.G.C. (1966-1989) A CIP catalogue r'ecord for this book is availabl'e from the British Library ISBN 0 43,6 20012 0 Photoset by Rowland Phototypesetting Limited Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay Limited, Bungay,, Suffolk First published in Great Britain in 1990 For by Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited Michelin House, 81 .Fulham Road, London SWJ 6RB V.H.M..C. (1904-1985) z.c. (1912-1988) Copyright© 1990].. M. Coetzee N.G.C. (1966-1989) A CIP catalogue r'ecord for this book is availabl'e from the British Library ISBN 0 43,6 20012 0 Photoset by Rowland Phototypesetting Limited Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay Limited, Bungay,, Suffolk T-here is an alley down the side of the garage, you may remember it, you and your friends would sometimes play ther,e. Now it is a dead place, waste, without use, where windblown leaves pi'fe up and rot. -
A Study of Place in the Novels of VS Naipaul
A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details Towards a New Geographical Consciousness: A Study of Place in the Novels of V. S. Naipaul and J. M. Coetzee Thesis submitted by Taraneh Borbor for the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy in English literature The University of Sussex September 2010 1 In the Name of God 2 I declare that the work in this thesis was carried out in accordance with the regulations of the University of Sussex. The work is original except where indicated by special reference in the text and no part of the thesis has been submitted for any other degree. The thesis has not been presented to any other university for examination either in the United Kingdom or overseas. Signature: 3 ABSTRACT Focusing on approaches to place in selected novels by J. M. Coetzee and V. S. Naipaul, this thesis explores how postcolonial literature can be read as contributing to the reimagining of decolonised, decentred or multi-centred geographies. I will examine the ways in which selected novels by Naipaul and Coetzee engage with the sense of displacement and marginalization generated by imperial mappings of the colonial space. -
Coetzee's Stones: Dusklands and the Nonhuman Witness
Safundi The Journal of South African and American Studies ISSN: 1753-3171 (Print) 1543-1304 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsaf20 Coetzee’s stones: Dusklands and the nonhuman witness Daniel Williams To cite this article: Daniel Williams (2018): Coetzee’s stones: Dusklands and the nonhuman witness, Safundi, DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2018.1472829 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2018.1472829 Published online: 21 Jun 2018. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rsaf20 SAFUNDI: THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN STUDIES, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/17533171.2018.1472829 Coetzee’s stones: Dusklands and the nonhuman witness Daniel Williams Society of Fellows, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Bringing together theoretical writing on objects, testimony, and J. M. Coetzee; testimony; trauma to develop the category of the “nonhuman witness,” this nonhuman; objects; essay considers the narrative, ethical, and ecological work performed ecocriticism; postcolonialism by peripheral objects in J. M. Coetzee’s Dusklands (1974). Coetzee’s insistent object catalogues acquire narrative agency and provide material for a counter-narrative parody of first-personal reports of violence in Dusklands. Such collections of nonhuman witnesses further disclose the longer temporality of ecological violence that extends beyond the text’s represented and imagined casualties. Linking the paired novellas of Dusklands, which concern 1970s America and 1760s South Africa, the essay finds in Coetzee’s strange early work a durable ethical contribution to South African literature precisely for its attention to nonhuman claimants and environments. -
The Failure of Sympathy in the Recent Works of J.M. Coetzee
The failure of sympathy in the recent works of JM Coetzee Warwick Ian Shapcott A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts (Research) School of English University of New South Wales July 2006 ORIGINALITY STATEMENT 'I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.' Signed ......... Date ........................ ..~~.l.~.l~.7 ......................... COPYRIGHT STATEMENT 'I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). -
James, Isaac. Providence Displayed: Or, the Remarkable Adventures of Alexander Selkirk. London, 1800. 148-55. the Celebrity of R
James, Isaac. Providence Displayed: or, The Remarkable Adventures of Alexander Selkirk. London, 1800. 148-55. The Celebrity of Robinson Crusoe appears to have arisen from two Causes; the affecting Situation in which he is placed, and the lively Fancy of De Foe in delineating the peculiar Difficulties with which it is attended. On the first of these alone, depends the Success of the following Sheets; my Design being to relate nothing but absolute Facts, for which I shall bring my Authorities. Being thus limited, although the Narrative may be less entertaining, it will be valuable, in the same proportion as Truth is preferable to Fiction. I shall, however, be able to exhibit the interesting Circumstances of such a seclusion from the World, in a variety of points of view, by giving not only Mr Selkirk's Adventures, but those of several others, most of whom were by a singular concurrence of causes, left upon the same Island. Their History will be related in order of time, after a general Description of the Theatre of their Adventures : in doing which, it will appear that Sir Richard Steele was mistaken in saying, ‘I do not think it foreign to my Design, to speak of a Man born in her Majesty's Dominions, and relate an Adventure in his Life so uncommon, that it's doubtful whether the like has happened to any other of human Race.’* Perhaps Selkirk's History, which is universally allowed to be the Ground-work of Robinson Crusoe, is the most remarkable, but the Instances I have to produce, are similar and authentic, and not foreign to my general Purpose. -
History Workshop
UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, JOHANNESBURG HISTORY WORKSHOP STRUCTURE AND EXPERIENCE IN THE MAKING OF APARTHEID 6-10 February 1990 AUTHOR: David Atwell TITLE: Ths " Labyrinth of My History " : The Struggle with Filiation in J. M. Costzee's Ousklands THE "LABYRINTH OF MY HISTORY": THE STRUGGLE WITH FILIATION IN J. M. COETZEE'S DVSKLANDS DAVID ATTWELL University of the Western Cape filiation is the name given by Edward Said to thai realm of nature or "life" that defines what is historically given to us by birth, circumstance or upbringing. Affiliation represents the process whereby filiative ties are broken and new ones formed, within cultural systems that constitute alternative sources of authority or coherence ("Secular Criticism" 16-20). The fiction of J. M. Coetzee can be described in terms of the way it embodies this shift; from the early work, in which colonialism is the stony ground on which consciousness and identity are formed, to the later, in which the inter-textual networks of literature are explored for their promise of partial, qualified forms of freedom. It would be a mistake, however, to read Life and Times ofMichael K and Foe as a-historical departures from the more socially critical Dusklands and In the Heart cf the Country. Affiliation is itself a historical process; it is the place where biography and culture meet. In Coetzee, it is also, among other things, a way of upholding a particular kind of critical consciousness, one that is always alert to both the disingenuous exercise of power, and the disingenuous representation of power. 1 In this essay, I am concerned with a small portion of the movement from filiation to affiliation within the corpus of Coetzee's novels: its beginnings in Dusklands. -
Self-Reflexivity in African Fiction: a Study on Coetzee’S Summertime
Indian J. Soc & Pol.1 (2): 21-24 : 2014 ISSN : 2348-0084 SELF-REFLEXIVITY IN AFRICAN FICTION: A STUDY ON COETZEE’S SUMMERTIME ASWATHY S M1 1Guest Lecturer, Dept. of English, Sree Narayana College for Women, Kollam, Kerala. INDIA ABSTRACT One of the things that distinguish postmodern aesthetic work from modernist work is extreme self-reflexivity. Postmodernists tend to take this even further than the modernists but in a way that tends often to be more playful, even irreverent. This same self-reflexivity can be found everywhere in pop culture, for example the way the Scream series of movies has characters debating the generic rules behind the horror film. In modernism, self-reflexivity tended to be used by "high" artists in difficult works .Post modernism, self-reflexive strategies can be found in both high art and everything from Seinfeld to MTV. In postmodern architecture, this effect is achieved by keeping visible internal structures and engineering elements (pipes, support beams, building materials, etc.). In many ways, postmodern artists and theorists and in Life and Times of Michael K. Coetzee‟s next novel, continue the sorts of experimentation that we can also find 1999s Disgrace, is a strong statement on the political in modernist works, including the use of self- climate in post–Apartheid South Africa. consciousness, parody, irony, fragmentation, generic Coetzee's Summertime opens and closes with mixing, ambiguity, simultaneity, and the breakdown journal entries, the only time the author (as character) between high and low forms of expression. In this way, speaks directly. The reader‟s temptation when reading postmodern artistic forms can be seen as an extension of Summertime is to try to work out what is brute fact, what modernist experimentation; however, others prefer to is irony, what is something else, but it‟s a temptation represent the move into postmodernism as a more radical which should be resisted. -
The Theatrical Adaptations of JM Coetzee's Foe Kareesha
Between Text and Stage: The Theatrical Adaptations of J.M. Coetzee's Foe Kareesha Naidoo Supervisor: Dr. Hermann Wittenberg A thesis produced as per the requirements of The University of the Western Cape, Department of English for the completion of a M.A. Degree (Full Thesis). March 2016 Abstract Between Text and Stage: The Theatrical Adaptations of J.M. Coetzee's Foe K.Naidoo MA Full thesis, Department of English, University of the Western Cape This 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.