Nightmares Of Apartheid: Discourse Of Violence And Power In J.M. Coetzee's Fiction

J. M. Coetzee is South Africa's most famous contemporary novelist, literary critic, translator and scholar. Situated in South Africa before and after apartheid, his novels describe the havoc and torment suffered by all ethnic groups in South Africa, highlighting the general nature of the state, power, violence and ideology. By reviewing his three novels published consecutively in 1980s and drawing upon theories of contemporary cultural studies and ideological criticism, the thesis discusses the psychological shadow cast by apartheid and historical catastrophe to ordinary people in South Africa, analyzes representation models of the nightmare haunted in people's heart, explores the close relation between "the state and power" as well as "subject and power" in the particular and typical context of South Africa, and reveals the politics of writing in the apartheid society.Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K and Foe are Coetzee's three major works in his glorious period. They all portray the contemporary South African society in the symbolic or allegorical form. Bearing the insight and introspection of Prison Notes, the three novels interpret the nightmare of apartheid in South Africa. They also anatomize the ideological nature of the misfortune and torture endured by social groups, namely racial differences constructed by the binary opposition between civilization and barbarism, dichotomy between the internal and the external based upon legitimization of violence of the state, and binary disparity of subjects characterized by dissemination of power. The state, violence, subject and power is extraordinarily expressed in contemporary South Africa, the freak of human civilization. This formulates the ideological core uncovered by Coetzee's political writing. The paper proceeds in three chapters.Firstly, rereading Waiting for the Barbarians unravels the ideological nature of the state and discourse of violence. By virtue of analyzing the theme of physical violence in the fiction, the thesis discusses the discourse of violence inscribed and imposed by the civilized on the identity of the Other and explores the arbitrariness of binary opposition between civilization and barbarism. In view of arbitrariness of state violence, it also demonstrates how the state legitimizes its rule of violence by fabricating enemies through discourse of law, justice, history etc. Besides, focusing on rule of rampant violence in South Africa, it reveals the fiction's particular perspective of contextual projection and ethic dimension.Secondly, through interpretation of Life & Times of Michael K, the thesis uncovers the relationship of symbiosis between subject and discourse of power and highlights the manipulation and interpolation of subjectivity by power. The genealogy of power constructs Michael K's identity. His physique, feature, deformity and disfigurement as well as behavior are all produced by power. The protagonist's consecutive futile escapes suggest that he never cast off the physical monitoring or gaze of discourse of power. As an "invisible hand", power disperses through all layers of social relations such as schools, hospitals, camps and jails, where it disciplines and punishes the subject through disciplinary imprisonment.Thirdly, interpretation of Foe focusing on the protagonist's struggle for the truth and authorial authority, presents us with Coetzee's politics of writing. Through the "rewriting" of colonial myth, Coetzee allegorically projects "Empire violence" onto "racial violence" in South Africa, demonstrating his refusal of and resistance to linguistic manipulation and appropriation, and how the racial myth and colonial myths achieve legitimacy through relentless glorification and demonization. By deconstructing the legitimization of racial and colonial myth, we find Coetzee's politics of writing aimed at subverting symbolic power and hegemonic discourse.In the end, by summarizing the three novels, the thesis probes the core of nightmarish apartheid and unveils the ideological nature of human civilization. Coetzee regards South African context overshadowed by apartheid as a perfect exemplar of the black flower of contemporary civilization. Adopting the narrative strategies of semioticization and signification, he explores the nightmare of human civilization and culture:the state's legitimization of power and violence, and power's construction, manipulation and interpolation of subjectivity.