J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of WritingDavid Attwell defends the literary and political integrity of South African novelist J.M. Coetzee by arguing that Coetzee has absorbed the textual turn of postmodern culture while still addressing the ethical tensions of the South African crisis. As a form of "situational metafiction," Coetzee's writing reconstructs and critiques some of the key discourses in the history of colonialism and apartheid from the eighteenth century to the present. While self-conscious about fiction-making, it takes seriously the condition of the society in which it is produced. Attwell begins by describing the intellectual and political contexts surrounding Coetzee's fiction and then provides a developmental analysis of his six novels, drawing on Coetzee's other writings in stylistics, literary criticism, translation, political journalism and popular culture. Elegantly written, Attwell's analysis deals with both Coetzee's subversion of the dominant culture around him and his ability to see the complexities of giving voice to the anguish of South Africa. |
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Contents
| 9 | |
The labyrinth of my history Dusklands and In the Heart of the Country | 35 |
Reading the Signs of History Waiting for the Barbarians | 70 |
Writing in the cauldron of history Life and Times of Michael K and Foe | 88 |
Conclusion Age of Iron | 118 |
Notes | 127 |
| 135 | |
| 145 | |
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achieve appear argues attempt authority Barbarians becomes begins body calls Coetzee's colonial comes concern consciousness context continues Country course critical critique culture Dawn death desire developed discourse Dusklands early effect emerges Empire essay ethical fact father fiction final follows forces Friday Friday's future hand human imagines interests involves Iron J. M. Coetzee Jacobus Coetzee kind language later less liberal limits linguistic literary literature live Magda Magistrate Magistrate's means metafiction Michael mother movement narrative narrator nature NOTES notion novel political position possible postmodernism present problem produce question reading reference relations relationship represents resistance says seems sense sequence simply situation social society South Africa speak specific stage story structure struggle suggest Susan taken takes textuality theory things tion tradition turn Waiting writing
Popular passages
Page 137 - ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE , Of YORK. MARINER: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of AMERICA, near the Mouth of the Great River of OROONOQUE; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. WITH An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by PYRATES. Written by Himself.
Page 15 - He defines the other choice, that of rivalry - obviously a position he himself identifies with - as resulting in: a novel that operates in terms of its own procedures and issues in its own conclusions, not one that operates in terms of the procedures of history and eventuates in conclusions that are checkable by history (as a child's schoolbook is checkable by a schoolmistress).
Page 3 - The point is that texts have ways of existing that even in their most rarefied form are always enmeshed in circumstance, time, place, and society — in short, they are in the world, and hence worldly.
Page 15 - ... schoolmistress). In particular I mean a novel that evolves its own paradigms and myths, in the process (and here is the point at which true rivalry, even enmity, perhaps enters the picture) perhaps going so far as to show up the mythic status of history — in other words, demythologising history ... a novel that is prepared to work itself out outside the terms of class conflict, race conflict, gender conflict or any of the other oppositions out of which history and the historical disciplines...
Page 15 - In times of intense ideological pressure like the present, when the space in which the novel and history normally coexist like two cows on the same pasture, each minding its own business, is squeezed to almost nothing, the novel, it seems to me, has only two options: supplementarity or rivalry.
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Bibliographic information
| Title | J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing Volume 48 of Perspectives on Southern Africa |
| Author | David Attwell |
| Publisher | University of California Press, 1993 |
| ISBN | 0520912519, 9780520912519 |
| Length | 160 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / Africa / General Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |