Self-fashioning In The Process Of Subversion And Containment An Interpretation Of Waiting For The Barbarians From New Historicism

John Maxwell Coetzee is a novelist as well as a literary critic who won the NobelPrize in2003and the Booker Prize twice. Waiting for the Barbarians is his third novel,which brings Coetzee the CNA Literary Award, Britain’s Geoffrey Faber Award and theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize. The novel seems simultaneously to engage with, and yetdistance itself from its political context, which leads to various interpretations. While manyscholars explore the novel from ethical, psychological and post-colonial perspectives, fewhave interpreted it from new historical perspective.This thesis, applying new historicism theories about power paradigm—subversionand containment, self-fashioning in the process of negotiation, explores not only thesubversion of authorities by juxtaposition of civilization and barbarism, parody of classicsand rewriting of histories, but also the containment of the subversion through falserepresentation and self-served justification. Coetzee put the magistrate in a marginalviewpoint, which offers the convenience to subvert the imperial main stream culture.However, the magistrate’s intention of subversion is finally contained by the dominantdiscourse and the novel becomes a carrier of capitalist ideology in circulation.Nevertheless, in the wrestling between subversion and containment, the novel actuallytakes part in the shaping of history．This thesis concludes that the novel is not only an allegorical writing of South Africaor colonized countries in the post-colonial period, but also a revelation to power paradigm.The liberal humanists’ rebellion towards power, though ending up in failure, is positive inthe sense that it involves in the shaping of history and gives hope to a possible ideal world.