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Tesi Di Laurea Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue e Letterature Europee, Americane e Postcoloniali Ordinamento ex D.M. 270/2004 Tesi di Laurea The Question of Violence in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace Relatore Prof. Marco Fazzini Correlatore Prof. Shaul Bassi Laureanda Katya Guida Matricola 841862 Anno Accademico 2017/2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction…………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One……………………………………………………….................5 1. The meaning of violence…………………………………………………..5 1.1. Defining violence……………………………………………………..6 1.2. The victim of violence………………………………………………..8 1.3. Classification of violence……………………………………………10 1.4. Order and violence…………………………………………………..13 2. Political violence: the difference between violence and power………….18 3. Violence and the colonial world…………………………………………24 4. Violence in the South African history……………………………………32 4.1. The origins of violence in South Africa: the roots of colonialism…..33 4.2. The dawn of racial segregation……………………………………...38 4.3. Apartheid, blend of psychological and physical violence…………...46 4.4. A reflection on post-apartheid South Africa………………………...60 Chapter Two………………………………………………………………...63 1. The role of the white South African writer: John Maxwell Coetzee and his challenge to the discourse of history……………………………………..64 2. Waiting for the Barbarians………………………………………………69 2.1. The notion of the Other: the Barbarian……………………………...71 2.2. C. P. Cavafy’s and J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians……76 2.3. Torture in Waiting for the Barbarians………………………………82 2.4. The Magistrate and the barbarian girl……………………………….92 2.5. History and the process of reading: the Magistrate’s wooden slips and the barbarian woman…………………………………………………99 2.6. The novel’s narrative techniques: Coetzee’s allegorical strategy….102 Chapter Three……………………………………………………………...108 1. Disgrace and the new South Africa……………………………………..110 2. Understanding rape culture: violence against women in post-apartheid South Africa………………………………………………………………….....116 3. Sexual violence in Disgrace……………………………………………..126 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………..141 Works cited…………………………………………………………………144 Ringraziamenti/Acknowledgements…………………………………...…151 1 INTRODUCTION Despite his recent emigration to Australia, John Maxwell Coetzee was born in South Africa and is considered one of the major South African writers. My dissertation has represented the possibility to explore a great novelist and his relation to the South African land. Through him, I have gained an understanding of how South Africa is portrayed through the author’s works and, in particular, I have been interested in the way in which history emerges from his novels. As a result, I have started with a deep study of South Africa’s history and then I have focused my attention on Coetzee’s novels Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace, which share what has become my main issue: the theme of violence. As far as the bond between literature and history is concerned, Coetzee’s writings have radically differed from the works of other contemporary writers, especially white South African authors. In fact, due to the colonial and Afrikaner domination over the centuries, the white South African writer’s role has been considered of crucial importance to stand against the horrors that have characterised this land. However, whereas white South African authors such as Nadine Gordimer or André Brink have overtly denounced the country’s atrocities (especially during the apartheid phase) through the adoption of realism, Coetzee’s allusive and provocative narrative has rendered his works only indirectly linked to the country’s concrete historical events. Despite his clever critique of the South African political system, he has never proposed an open denunciation of South Africa’s crimes. For this reason, Coetzee has been widely criticised for his lack of specificity and for not having taken an overt position against the injustices of South African history. The aim of this dissertation is to analyse the question of violence in Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace in order to understand the relationship between history and literature in Coetzee’s novels; violence is the means through which the bond between the historical and the literary discourse will be clarified. Above all, I have attempted to show how Coetzee 2 invokes the power of imagination over an imposed historical discourse: he challenges history in favour of the writer’s free, imaginative powers. Through the depiction of violence Coetzee has a twofold goal. First, the representation of violence allows him a scrutiny of the human condition, which reveals human beings’ contrasting nature. This is possible thanks to the novels’ protagonists, the Magistrate and David Lurie, which occupy the middle ground between two opposite perspectives: the Empire against the barbarians, the white world in contrast to the black community, and the conflict between the female and the masculine identity. In both Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace, the opposition between the perpetrator and the victim of violence is pivotal to show the dualism that is inherent in every human being. Whereas the perpetrator of violence is someone who reveals his loss of humanity – the worst level that a human being can reach – the victims of violence manifest human beings’ vulnerability when they are subjected to violent acts such as torture or rape. Thus, this dissertation deals with the issue of identity and, in particular, with the protagonists’ process of self-transformation which is encouraged through the relationship with the other. The driving questions behind the text could be: is a form of evil present in all of us? Is it possible to redeem oneself through the bond with the other? Secondly, the portrayal of violence enables a reflection on the history of South Africa. I would like to explore how the novels present an indirect criticism of South African history, especially focusing on the colonial domination, on apartheid and post-apartheid eras. I explain how the use of violence by the South African political systems have had a profound impact on South Africans’ lives over the centuries. I also observe the author’s difficulty to deal with this theme and his narrative strategies to cope with such a thorny topic. The attempt has been to propose a possible answer to the following queries: how is violence represented in Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace? What is the correspondence between the violent acts represented in the novels and South African history’s real events? In addition, my aim is to demonstrate Coetzee’s ability to transcend any specific South 3 African setting in order to think globally and to show how the reader is requested to attach his/her own meaning to a literary text. In order to address all these questions, this dissertation will be divided into three main chapters. The first chapter will explore the meaning of violence in relation to South African history. A definition of violence will be provided through the contributions of the Italian sociologist Paola Rebughini and the German sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky. Hanna Arendt’s work On Violence will contribute to clarify the distinction between the notions of violence and power, two issues that are often misused in everyday language, in particular when they are linked with the realm of politics. Then, the role of violence will be examined in the colonial time and during the process of decolonization; this will be possible through Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, where violence’s revengeful function will emerge. To conclude, violence will be analysed in the four major phases of South African history: colonialism, the transitional period before apartheid’s establishment, the apartheid regime (in which the baaskap apartheid, the separate development apartheid, and the multiracial co-option apartheid will be distinguished), and the post-apartheid era. The second chapter is meant to shed light on the representation of torture in Waiting for the Barbarians. First, I will begin with an analysis of the white South African writer’s role and his challenge to the discourse of history. Then, I will observe the notion of the other, represented here by the “barbarian”; specifically, a comparison between C. P. Cavafy’s poem Waiting for the Barbarians and Coetzee’s novel will be offered. Furthermore, the novel’s depiction of torture and the writer’s struggle to write about it will be presented. Colonial history and the process of reading will be shown to have significant functions in the novel; moreover, the bond between the protagonist and the other, the barbarian girl, will be scrutinized. To conclude, the novel’s narrative strategies will be summarised to understand the text’s complexity and the author’s allegorical style. The third chapter will concentrate on the representation of sexual violence in the novel Disgrace. I will show how the context of post-apartheid 4 South Africa emerges from the novel, examining South African rape culture. Here women occupy a secondary position in relation to men; they appear to be subordinate to a rooted masculine culture that renders them vulnerable and fragile. Melanie Isaacs and Lucy Lurie’s characters and the subsequent effects that sexual violence has on the novel’s protagonists will be analysed. The chapter will end with a focus on the novel’s narrative strategies employed by Coetzee. My hope is that my dissertation could contribute to clarify the meaning and significance of violence in Coetzee’s novels, also underlying the impact that the colonial way of thinking has had for South Africa throughout the centuries. My purpose is to stress Coetzee’s peculiarity as a writer: he has presented to his readers an engaging and unconventional portrayal of South Africa, drawing our attention on a violent past that should never be forgotten. 5 CHAPTER ONE 1. The meaning of violence In our contemporary society, we have been accustomed to hear or read the word “violence” almost every day. When mass media provide us with information of what is happening in our own country or around the world, it is probable that a relation to a violent act exists.
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