A Writing Of Power-A Reading Of J.M. Coetzee's Waiting For The Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians, along with J. M. Coetzee's other novels, has long been criticized for its detachment from the social and political context of South Africa. Its lack of specific location in time and place, its emphasis on the cyclical time of the seasons, all making it susceptible to ahistorical and apolitical readings. This thesis is to argue that Waiting for the Barbarians does not distance itself away from the social and political context; rather, with the employment of the device of allegory, it offers a medication on the barbarian nature of all civilizations.This thesis deals with the novel from four aspects. Part One analyzes the network of power in the novel, illustrating how the empire establishes hegemonic power over the nomadic tribe and represses its people, but at the same time produces resistance among the people. The focus of Part Two is to reveal the enforcement of power on human body, in the case of the novel, that is, the tortures inflicted on the barbarians by the empire, those on the girl by the Magistrate, and also the physical punishment the Magistrate suffers from the empire. Part Three, combined with Foucault's theory of knowledge, points out that knowledge, whether in the form of the law or the history, is created and recorded by the empire, thus the product of power as well. Part Four deals with resistance from within the discourse of power, namely, the attempt of the Magistrate to break away from the empire and effect justice for the victims.By writing power in an analogical way, Waiting for the Barbarians unveils the mask of our civilization and reflects on the racial and cultural issues in the course of human history.