An Ideal Of Constructing Harmonious Society In Postcolonial Colonies

In the postcolonial context,'subjectivity'has always been a very important concept, according to Hegel and Sartre's definition, it refers to a kind of dominant ranks and status, or dominant subject, and is based on the concept of'others'which exists as its opposite. So the problem of subjectivity in the postcolonial context, or the problem of the relationship between the'subject'and the'other'is the main topics discussed by the theorists or all the writers of the post-colonialism. Especially in front of today when the postcolonialism, economical globalization and national culture multiplication are its main characters, it will be of more general and important significance to attend to the problem of the subjevtivity of each nations in the postcolonial society, the problem of the relationship between the subjects and the others, as well as the problem that how all different subjects, different nations and races can live together harmoniously. The author J.M. Coetzee, as a white writer born in South Africa, writing in the postcolonial era and winning the literary Nobel Prize in 2003, he naturally obliges him to take on this great responsibility to attend to and study all these problems, profoundly and keenly, almost in all of his works, particularly in his representative work Disgrace in which he mainly attends to those problems existing in South Africa in the era of post Apartheid. In The Slow Man, which was published by him only in 2005 and therefore closer to the present era, with the setting of the story being put in Australia, Coetzee, therefore, more profoundly and in a sense of broader significance, further considers and researches the problem how to deal with the relationship between different subjects or different nations in today's societies or especially in the postcolonial colonies in which all different kinds of nations and races and people are fusing together or mixing up day after day, with the aim to realize his ideal of constructing a harmonious society in which all of the different subjects can stay together and communicate with each other equally, freely and cooperatively. That is, if a harmonious society is to be constructed in the postcolonial colonies or even in all of the countries through out the world, all the different subjects must be able to give up the traditional rationality which is based on the principle of subjectivity, and respect each other's status, and then, as a result, different subjects can mutually respect and understand each other, and can communicate with each other equally, freely, and cooperatively. This is just also the idea of communicative rationality put forward by Habermas. While, in his two novels, that is Disgrace and The Slow Man, what Coetzee wants to communicate to the reader through his description of the major characters and the writing itself which embody his consideration of the subjective problem in the postcolonial society is just also such a kind of idea. So both in Disgrace and in The Slow Man, the author's ideal of constructing a harmonious society is embodied.Meanwhile, from Disgrace to The Slow Man, it can also be showed as a spiritual journey of Coetzee's to seek for a harmonious society. Because the condition of economical development is still unequal among different subjects or nations in the postcolonial societies where the economical condition is still less developed, and also because Coetzee has based the realization of a harmonious society on the moral self-awakening of the traditionally superior subjects among a society and on the inherent potentiality of the development of everyone's inner moral which the author thinks to be, this spiritual journey of seeking for a harmonious society can only be realized in his own fictional world, but can not be realized in reality, that is, it can only be an ideal impossible to come true. Even so, the ideal of how to construct a harmonious society embodied in his two novels is still very significant and suggestive for us to further construct our mother country into a more prosperous and harmonious multiracial one.This dissertation is divided into four chapters: the first chapter mainly introduces the author Coetzee and his works, as well as the purpose of writing this dissertation and its study background; the second chapter is about the predicament of the postcolonial era embodied in Disgrace and The Slow Man; the third Chapter mainly discusses the constructing and the collapsing of the ideal of a harmonious society; and the last chapter is the conclusion.