A New Historical Study Of J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace

J.M.Coetzee, the 2003 Nobel Literature prize winner and twice Booker prize winner, is a South African white writer, who explores the living conditions of human being and relationship between human and history through his writings. Disgrace is his first novel for South Africa in the post apartheid period. This thesis is a New Historical study of the novel in relation to South African social culture.This thesis is composed of three parts. Chapter one explores J.M.Coetzee's historical consciousness and how it is embodied in Disgrace. Coetzee's perspectives on history and fiction writing coincide with New Historical views on literature. His historical consciousness in writing Disgrace is in effect strongly influenced by the political and cultural context of post-apartheid South Africa. New Historicism breaks the boundaries between reality and fiction, facts and plots. J.M.Coetzee breaks the boundaries between fiction and history by inventing plots realistic in the specific era in South Africa. As a white writer against the apartheid policy, Coetzee reconstructs the evils of histories by artistic creation, reflecting the social problems in the wake of the end of the apartheid.Chapter Two analyzes how Coetzee reconstructs histories through marginalized voices that are neglected and oppressed. In this way, Coetzee breaks the official historical discourse. In South Africa, non-whites and white women are marginalized and long-deprived of voices to express themselves. After the end of apartheid, the blacks have returned to the center of power from voiceless status. In a male-dominated society, women are bound to lose their voices. Colored women start to express themselves and succeed in challenging Lurie's male superiority. Doubly-marginalized from South African society, Lucy gives up her middle-class family and the patriarchal protection to seek an independent life. Through depicting their struggle to fight back and voice their rights through actions or discourse, Coetzee shows his understanding of New Historicism.Chapter Three approaches the leading characters Lurie and Lucy through Greenblatt's Self-fashioning, disclosing their struggle in new South Africa. It is through submitting to the new authority that they accomplish their self-fashioning. Coetzee reflects himself on Lurie and he is also bewildered like his character. After constant physical and spiritual struggles Lurie fashions himself as an aging white losing all his power in this land. Lucy has no choice but to give up everything in reality to continue to live in this land as a starter. They are shaped by the times and their experiences and other power outside their control. Only through submitting to the outside power, can the self-fashioning be achieved, and move on to fashion other selves.In conclusion, the author of this thesis points out that Coetzee is a responsible writer with strong historical consciousness. Through showing concern on marginalized people, Coetzee creates histories which rival the official historical discourse. With racial issues left over by the old system, both the whites and the blacks should find their own positions in the society. Ultimately Coetzee achieves self-fashioning in Disgrace as a white intellectual who feels lost in the post-apartheid South Africa through subverting to the absolute authority outside their control.