Abstract
There are two obvious positions in the polemics suggested by this title, which I shall begin by naming in order to open other possibilities. The first would be that in J.M. Coetzee’s writing the African subject or African humanity is under-represented and under-valued, and to this extent Coetzee’s work exhibits the mentalité of the settler colonial. The kind of evidence that is ready to hand for this argument would be that in Foe (Coetzee 1986) Friday is mutilated and voiceless; in Disgrace (Coetzee 1999) Petrus is a schemer who connives in Lucy’s rape; in Age of Iron (Coetzee 1990) the revolutionized youth and their mentors, Florence and Thabane, allow their war with the regime to become a war on the very concept of childhood. This position finds it regrettable that the novels tend to place resistance in question rather than representing it positively; where it is represented it is displaced onto faceless subjects like the barbarians, or marginal characters like Michael K. whose refusals are unrecognizable in terms that have any connection with the African experience of colonialism. Especially awkward in this view is the indubitably seedy figure of Emmanuel Egudu, the Nigerian novelist in Elizabeth Costello who manufactures authenticity by celebrating the ersatz orality of the African novel to sustain himself in the Western literary marketplace.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
[M]y intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.
(J.M. Coetzee, Dagens Nyheter 7 December, 2003)
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Attridge, D. (2004a) J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event (University of Chicago Press and University of KwaZulu-Natal Press).
—— (2004b) The Singularity of Literature (London: Routledge).
Campbell, R. (1968) Selected Poetry, J.M. Lalley (ed.) (London: Bodley Head).
Coetzee, J.M. (1978) In the Heart of the Country (Johannesburg: Ravan Press).
—— (1983) Life and Times of Michael K. (Johannesburg: Ravan Press).
—— (1985) Review of Karel Schoeman, ‘n Ander Land’, in Die Suid-Afrikaan (Summer), p. 48.
Coetzee, J.M. (1986) Foe (Johannesburg: Ravan Press).
—— (1987) ‘Two Interviews with J.M. Coetzee, 1983 and 1987’, T. Morphet in Triquarterly 69, pp. 454–64. (First interview rpt. from Social Dynamics, 10(1) (1984): 62–5).
—— (1988) White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (Johannesburg: Radix; New Haven: Yale UP).
—— (1992) Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews, D. Attwell (ed.) (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP).
—— (1990) Age of Iron (Johannesburg: Ravan Press).
—— (1999) Disgrace (London: Secker and Warburg).
Coetzee, J.M. (2002) Youth (London: Secker and Warburg).
—— (2003) Interview with David Attwell, Dagens Nyheter, 7 December.
—— (2004) Elizabeth Costello (London: Secker and Warburg).
Comaroff, J. (1985) Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People (University of Chicago Press).
Crewe, J. (1997) ‘The Spectre of Adamastor: Heroic Desire and Displacement in “White” South Africa’, Modern Fiction Studies, 43(1) (Spring): 27–52.
Derrida, J. (1978) ‘Force and Signification’, in Writing and Difference (London: Routledge).
Green, M. (2006) ‘Deplorations’, English in Africa, 33(2) (October): 135–58.
Mbembe, A. (2001) On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Mofolo, T. (1981 [1925]) Chaka (London: Heinemann African Writers Series).
Mudimbe, V.Y. (1994) The Idea of Africa (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP; London: James Currey).
Pechey, G. (2002) ‘Coetzee’s Purgatorial Africa: The Case of Disgrace’, Interventions, 4(3): 374–83.
Plaatje, S.T. (1978) Mhudi (London: Heinemann African Writers Series).
Spivak, G. (1994) ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in P. Williams and L. Chrisman (eds) Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf).
Van Wyk Smith, M. (1988) Shades of Adamastor: Africa and the Portuguese Connection. An Anthology of Poetry (Grahamstown: Institute for the Study of English in Africa, and National English Literary Museum).
Vološinov, V.N. (1973) Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, translated by M. Matejka and I.I. Titunik (New York and London: Seminar Press).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2011 David Attwell
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Attwell, D. (2011). J.M. Coetzee and the Idea of Africa. In: Bateman, F., Pilkington, L. (eds) Studies in Settler Colonialism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306288_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306288_15
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-31588-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-30628-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)