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Chapter 3 Post-colonial Psyche
The purpose of Digrace is not to deny the fact that the protagonist does rape his student, nor making an excuse for using his authority to abuse his power and his student. But then, behind the most obvious story, Coetzee attempts to elucidate the representation of the rapist which is integrated into the regime of the law. Moreover, his writing aims toward a supplementary elucidation of desire in many senses, which does not include adding supplements to the dominant history of post-apartheid Africa and the discourse of female oppression. Rather, the novel is supposed to be treated as a critical engagement with the historiography of sovereignty and power as well as gender and sexuality. There is a scene in which one of the university colleagues
“spoken in a voice quivering with righteousness,” saying “…when we try to get specificity, all of a sudden it is not abuse of a young woman he is confessing, just an impulse he could not resist, with no mention of the pain he has caused, no mention of the long history of exploitation of which this is part. That is why I say it is futile to go on debating with Professor Lurie. We must take his plea at face value and recommend accordingly” (53; emphasis added). “Abuse: he was waiting for the word.” Then there is a scornful inner thought on Lurie’s part. As for the reader, Lurie’s ignoring the criticism of abuse is valuable and pivotal to potentiality. In fact, to replicate the discourse of female abuse or to regard it as real contempt for the female community are both off-base. What Coetzee wants to do is to take the unusual measure of sexual transgression into meticulous introspection in order to get the truth of humanity. In
“The writer’s place: Coetzee and postcolonial literature” Dominic Head emphasizes a trait of Coetzee’s fiction, that is, “offers an explicit challenge to the dominance of
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realism in African (especially South African) fiction, by distancing itself from the contemporary South African context, at first geographically and then historically” (2;
emphasis added). Coetzee’s preoccupations with textual structures is a way to offer intellectual challenges to realist conventions, so to speak. Apart from that, my concern is to highlight its dual effect of bringing out the merit of deconstruction based on the repudiation of connecting with the structure, in a thematical sense of western
influences. Since the textuality enacts a kind of analysis of colonizing psyche, that which is the contribution of self-conscious fictions to postmodernism.
Self-conscious novel, to some extent, endorses the statement that truth is stranger than fiction. In fact, Coetzee’s preoccupation with the stylistic departure is to bring out the force of nature that can hardly be expressed through a realist depiction of colonial violence. The dark emotions that which certainly do not refer to the deprivation of political presence, the exploitation, the abuse, gender violence, or oppression. The detachment on text is to keep track of the deferring potentiality of other forms of colonialism. In Disgrace, such force of nature refers to subdued sexuality. Coetzee attempts to challenges the interpretations of Foucaldian power relayions based on a dichotomous perspective which will cause erasure of the other existence of sexuality. For instance, in the novel, Over-emphasis on sexual abuse results in covering the other perceptions such as Melanie’s exploitation of Lurie.
Melanie, responsive in reciprocal, learns to take advantage of her subaltern position in dealing with him: “She is behaving badly, getting away with too much; she is learning to exploit him and will probably exploit him further. But if she has got away with much, he has got away with more; if she is behaving badly, he has behaved worse. To the extext that they are together, if they are together, he is the one who leads, she the one who follows” (28). To replicate the Foucaldian discourse between the professor
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and the student is to oversee the dynamic of structure and the autonomy of the oppressed. In this scene, the colonized object is Melanie’s language, which is not given adequate political consideration. In other words, her presence fails to offer a political configuration that which could influence the post-apartheid African history through rationalization. Over and above her disgrace, she represents a kind of
imagination of colonialism which, if treated separatedly, shows the beauty and power of passivity and the effect of enlightenment, alongside pain and violence. However, such beauty and enlightenment can only be experienced in a status of disgrace, that is, in the usurption of her physical body and in the deprivation of her language in the mundane world. The exploitation of her body causes the destruction of her language, her ability to elucidate memory, and bereft her of political presence. Yet, as readers, we get a glimpse of romantic sublimation through this kind of ultra disgraceful writing. However, it is notesworthy that Coetzee does not mean to consolidate a sexuality that finally finds a spiritual outlet in a status of inferiority and humility.
Instead, it could only blossom in the conditions of disgrace. In this means, the taboo is not being directly challenged and actively eliminated, but is being concerned in an oblique way. The expression of Melanie’s sexuality is provoked within the structure of power relationships, so to speak. There is no possibility to divide her empowered status of romantic sublimation from her seducer, and exists solely. Accordingly, it is imperative to redeem Melanie’s identity through destructing her status of
victimization: metaphorically, Eve is empowered with the company of the serpent. Or, conversely, her status of victimization loses its initial connotation due to her passive-aggressive sexual movements. She is not the victim in juridical or traditional
humanitarian senses, but fades into an ambiguous position in the line of flight.
Melanie’s sexual movement is also her political participation in the domain of power
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relations by the same token. However, it is not political in the traditional sense since it has existed through a state of being sexually colonized. This is what I consider the meaning of postcolonialism in which expanding the colonial stereotypes and restoring the desire of the colonized.
The Authority
It can be said that colonial violence is a concept too large to be challenged. In Disgrace, the disempowered police system symbolizes the regime of power that
operates through the governance of vicissitude of forms of life itself. Yet if the state power is based on the mechanisms and calculations of biopolitical bodies, then both colonial justice and colonial violence require further critical engagement to get beneath to its strategies. See just how the inquiry of Lurie’s scandal could decide the political meaning of his behaviors. Thus, Disgrace is a complex novel that keeps revolving in the dialectics of postcolonial violence and justice. In the novel, what Lurie calls the transformed and “emasculated institution of learning” (4) undoubtedly foreshadows the castration on the sovereign power of the apparatus.
“No country…for old men (190)” is the protagonist’s comment on the times. But how does this impression form? “Young women struggling to escape from under the weight of old men, for the sake of species,” “the marriage of Cronus and Harmony,”
those statements that evoke a great deal of self-loathing seem to contextualize inappropriate desire with age, and give reasons to the decline of power. Disgrace tackles on this sentiment from the perspective of sexual ability. The relentless rebuke from the crowd not only increases a sense of victimization in the case but also categorizes him to the status of the subaltern. All that is old are labeled as the subaltern, an effect which the discourse of rationalism produces. But readers might think the inappropriate desire is all that Coetzee aims to justify and normalize for the
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sake of justice. False empathy is thereby triggered. The protagonist is criticized for his impulsive affair with a student in defiance of legal justice. He breaks the rule. Yet does the rule says he cannot have an affair with a student? A copy of the code is sent to him: “Article 3 deals with victimization or harassment on grounds of race, ethnic group, religion, gender, sexual preference, or physical disability. Article 3.1 addresses victimization or harassment of students by teachers (39).” The codes deal with various kinds of victimization, but it does not say affairs between teacher and student is forbidden. “Friends, this is not the time or place to go into substantial issues. What we should do […] is clarify procedure. […] Your name will be protected. Ms. Isaacs’s name will be protected too” (41). Lurie “understands” profoundly the juridical procedure. He does not need to be informed. Therefore, the lawyer, who is obliged to be on behalf of him, represents a doubtful position. The lawyer is more like bending to the collective morality rather than taking charge of the law. What are these people putting up? It looks like the hearing committee is set up to investigate the truth: “the body here gathered…has no powers…All it can do is to make recommendations (47).” The members believe they are not criticizing his heart, but they are just
measuring the situation according to the codes. Because everyone in the city wants to be a metropolitan, everyone pretends to be global, rational, and liberal. The
protagonist is compelled to be shrunk into a smaller version of himself so he could taste the metropolis sensation of a bad professor he ought to taste. They don’t have powers individually, but the component of different cultural backgrounds are sufficient enough to provide complementary details and support themselves as
representative of a fair judgment of the society. Their participation is not “prejudicial”
(47) to him. Everything is arranged against appearing prejudicial to any political parties such as “student observer from the Coalition Against Discrimination” (48). But
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what do these opinions from the minorities matter if Melanie, the only person
involved, is not here? What does she care about the issues they lay in the committee?
Hence, the point is not about its composition, but that his confession cannot prove that the affair does exist. Nevertheless, they believe the function of the committee is to preserve just and that the professor’s name will be protected. But, they cannot protect him. Romances between professors and students are always a discredit. Not just them, but also the old and the young, the Oedipus complex, the Electra’s complex, and the cross-cultural relationship, they are all the same. The disgraceful and the corrupted is romances. However, the protagonist has to fight against the interrogations from others, all of which avoid the existence of Eros. Human relationships are placed in opposition to the problems of positions. The juridical procedure puts those human relationships like lovers and foes on trial, exposing one’s inner chaos in front of the public. Disgrace unravels modern absurdity of demonstrating great obedience to work ethics. Those standards have inevitably enhanced the established Foucaldian power relationships that are everywhere in the system. A person is, therefore, submitting to everyone in this system.
What is an outsider? It means a person is seen as detached from all human relationships, and the public interrogations stimulate it. Lurie’s ex-wife tells him,
“don’t expect sympathy from anyone else either,” “[n]o sympathy, no mercy, not in this day and age.” The sentiment is prejudicial and yet led by the juridical committee, where everyone is able to recriminate him. However, does Lurie refuse to cooperate with the system just for claiming his right to have a sexual relationship with his student? Of course not. For me, he follows the rules but disrespects the people who are questioning him. The disappearance of Melanie is a crucial point, not that her vows could be recruited into the lack of female voice, but that she cannot be
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incorporated into the moral surveillance. She does not show up and her parents do not wish her not to show up as well: just let them deal with it. Her life is in the hands of other people. Yet, it is hard for Melanie to gather courage and rebel against the authority. Only Lurie can depend on his pension and his reputation to protest. The reputation he has built so far becomes the capital to fight for the battle, not the
forfeiture he should pay for corruption. Hence, Disgrace redefines the responsibilities of a position, bringing light to the rewardless rebellion. The committee, which is supposed to be politically right, is not even dealing with it within its juridical boundaries. More and more people, including the protesting groups, are affected.
Those people form an agreement to surrender the protagonist to the trial, for crimes he is suspected to have committed. What is indicated is that everyone is exposed to the risk of being surrender to trial; everyone can become that fugitive simply based on a few codes and vacant suspicions. The object of the committee is to reach a fair judgment. But neither fair recognition nor clemency does Lurie look for from people.
Once positions and powers are associated, you are subjected to some highly sensitive demands from others that are beyond justice. They are not just dealing with the laws, or they will not decline the plea of the protagonist that is also his right. The idea of a humanitarian shelter built by the system cannot offer the individual validation for him.
In his diary, J. M. Coetzee asks, “Why is it so hard to say anything about politics from outside politics? Why can there be no discourse about politics that is not
political (Diary 9)?” It is a metropolitan idea to mix sexual relations with power relations. After all, who can deny it is unequal (53)? Who can deny it is abuse (53)?
Who can deny the interrelations between knowledge and powers, or deny the fact powers are distributed into the system? It is a universal truth, and the process of
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contextualizing each situation is based on this metropolis acknowledgement. Just, reliable, righteous, cosmopolitan, and exposed to the crowd. But the real truth is always boycotted by the system. Earlier on, Lurie believes he is able to understand the situation of Soraya, yet she refuses to bring it up to him. This experience allows Lurie to know he was not exposed to diverse cultures. While everyone in the committee pretends to be a metropolis citizen and persecutes the protagonist with power abuse, the subaltern refuse to mingle with the powers in the system.
“Contextualizing” the sexual relationship within the vein of political justice inevitably leads to the “rationalization” and “intelligibility” of rape. However, without getting beneath the substantial, the pursuit of justice is based on the repudiation of the implications of rape. To distribute justice toward the rapist and victim means that the representation of sexual violence is intelligible to the public. In this sense, it is an epistemic colonization to the traumatic memory. In other words, linguistic
colonization on past experience is doomed to fail in representation because it is a form of castration to the romanticized Eros. Secondly, the statement points out that the names under protection is a replica of their social identity, that which keeps alienating from their being at the moment. Again, an epistemic violation to the inexplicable dark emotions. However, the epistemic representation of the predator and the victim will easily fall on the path of abandoning proper treatment to the knowledge of such colonization. The quest for justice leads Lurie to project his own image on that of Lucy’s rapists, having nightmares in which “he wallows in a bed of blood, or, panting, shouting soundlessly, runs from the man with the face like a hawk, like a Benin mask, like Thoth” (121). Segall, in “Pursuing Ghosts,” writes, “The Benin masked savage who threatens Lurie also symbolizes the mythical figure of Thoth, who judges the hearts of the dead and records the results. These symbols represent not only anxiety
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over female violation, but also an early precursor of Lurie’s sense of guilt in the figure of the judge. Symbolically the traumatic sublime changes a figure of female
oppression and a figure of fear into the specter of judgement” (44; emphasis added).
Segall argues that the specter of Thoth is a propulsion for Lurie to consider the issue of female oppression. However, besides the explicit message of Thoth, the ancient Egyptian deity associated with the godly dispute, the system of writing, and the judgement of the dead, it also implies that the figure of the judge can mislead the exploration of the hearts of dead, defining a sense of guilt under the premise of justice. Through criticizing violence, Lurie and his colleagues, standing for the Western culture, come to validate what it means to be savage, violent in the Western reign of sovereignty. In helping Lurie to go through the legal system, his colleague believes they are able to maintain a sort of “male chumminess” (42). The foundation of friendship that has something to do with belonging are repeatedly demonstrated in the novel. And yet, Coetzee, in a provocative sense, does not treat the sexist predator protagonist as losing his sense of humanity. What is more, it is not in his sexual transgression that we see something remarkably progressive, but through dealing with moral sovereignty Disgrace leads us to discover what it means to be human at the frontier of conscience. It points out violence itself should be reconsidered for it nevertheless embodies a nostalgic call to the right of desire.
Moral Dinosaur
The nostaligic call for freedom is also revealed in Lurie’s curiosity for Lucy’s knowledge and memory. The ignorance of the knowledge of otherness results in the epistemic representation of violence and develops into the forming of post-justice, which is essentially far from the real savageness and conscience demanded from the characters. Lurie’s most extreme crisis lies in his incompetence of guessing what is
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articulate from the savage:
He speaks Italian, he speaks French, but Italian and French will not save him here in darkest Africa. He is helpless, an Aunt Sally, a figure from a cartoon, a missionary in cassock and topi waiting with clasped hands and upcast eyes while the savages jaw away in their own lingo preparatory to plunging him into their boiling cauldron. Mission work: what has it left behind, that huge enterprise of upliftment? Nothing that he can see (95).
In validating the cartoonish colonial stereotypes of savage, he comes to validate his own sense of Western colonial morality. He is the “missionary” with the “huge enterprise of upliftment.” He can grasp the savage in Western colonial
In validating the cartoonish colonial stereotypes of savage, he comes to validate his own sense of Western colonial morality. He is the “missionary” with the “huge enterprise of upliftment.” He can grasp the savage in Western colonial