Flux Of Social Relations In Coetzee's Novels From The Spatial Perspective

John Maxwell Coetzee(1940-)is one of the most important writers in South Africa.Being a witness to the most difficult transitional period of time in his country,he attempts to explore,discuss and negotiate the issues that South Africa are faced with,especially the apartheid.In his writings,he shows both sympathy for the plight of black people and the dilemma of white people,especially white women,on this land.As a result,he has often been accused of being politically ambiguous and not fulfilling his intellectual responsibilities.Since 1980 s,Coetzee has continuously drawn the attention of the critics and researchers.His novels have been approached from the perspectives of post-colonialism,cultural identity,and animal images,etc..However,in China,researches on Coetzee does not start until the beginning of the 21 st century.In addition,current researches mainly focuses on the post-colonialism in Coetzee's novels and the theme of the sufferings of the other in South Africa.Among these researches at home and abroad,some touch on the political thoughts in Coetzee's novels.However,such researches only focus on Coetzee's political thoughts in a certain period and ignore his ideological changes under the change of social environment.Coetzee's early works,such as In the Heart of the Country,are often overlooked.In light of Zoran's topographical space and Lefebvre's theory of social space and spatial power mechanism,this thesis analyzes the political implications of the spaces represented in Coetzee's novels,especially the city and country in In the Heart of the Country,Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace.Moreover,it tries to decode the different power relations presented by two opposite spaces in three novels.The writer of this thesis starts the investigation on the ground of the following two theoretical points.Firstly,spaces in the novel not only contribute to the development of the story,or serve as sites where the plots unfold,but also play shaping part in characterization,and encode the thematic matter that writers attemptto reveal.Secondly,the geographic spaces can reflect social relations and power relations because it can also be seen as spaces of political,economical and cultural meanings.In the three novels that will be examined in this thesis,Coetzee uses space to reflect the evolution of the power relationship between races and genders in the historical development.From In the Heart of the country to Disgrace,the white have lost their privilege and the black gain the authority through continuous resistance.Moreover,these three novels show the struggle of women under the oppression of men.It should be noted that in the three novels,Coetzee constructs different utopian spaces,and the change of utopian places is a reflection of the social changes that woman and the black have gradually awaken their subject consciousness.Meanwhile,Coetzee's deconstruction of utopia further annotates his views on the relationship between people and power.Analyzing the political symbolism of spaces in Coetzee's novels is conductive to the further study of Coetzee's creative intention as a white South African writer and his humanistic concern for individuals living under the power network.