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Chapter 4 Post-natural Existence
The Unnatural
The infant of Lucy symbolizes the disgrace of Lurie’s own masculine identity.
The child is the product of incest, but he, who wishes for Lucy to take abortion, who wishes to kill the illegal child, is silmultaneously the father and the grandfather of this child. He, who does not wish it be the result of his generation, shares the feeling of incest with the child and a disgrace of of his own blood. Whether it is the coming of the infant, the feeling of motherhood in Lucy, or his feeling toward the infant, are all unnatural, wicked, and distorted. Such disgrace is distinct from the previous sense of disgrace as he meditates on having an urge to sleep with young female, which is represented as follow:
The marriage of Cronus and Harmony: unnatural. That was what the trial was set up to punish, once all the fine words were stripped away. On trial for his way of life. For unnatural acts: for broadcasting old seed, tired seed, seed that does not quicken, contra naturam. If the old men hog the young women, what will be the future of the species? That, at bottom, was the case for the prosecution (190; original emphasis).
The unnatural desire to leave something behind in the old man illustrates his fears of aging and death. Yet, the myth of gods, paradoxically, reveals that to transgress, violate the natural flow of instincts is also one of the capacities that characterized for human being. The unnatural urge of violating the law is a natural behavior, which people regards as humanity. Another scene in which Lurie is confronted by one of Melanie’s friend in her drama performance is also explicit about the horror of the unntural in normal life:
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Ryan draws on his cigarette. “Only doing you a favour, prof. Didn’t you learn your lesson?”
“What was my lesson?”
“Stay with your own kind.”
Your own kind: who is this boy to tell him who his kind are? What does he
know of the force that drives the utmost strangers into each other’s arms, making them kin, kind, beyond all prudence? Omnis gens quaecumque se in se perficere vult. The seed of generation, driven to perfect itself, driving
deep into the woman’s body, driving to bring the future into being. Drive, driven. (194; original emphasis)
The boy speaks of “kind” in terms of the power relations in political area, while Lurie refers to “kind” in an anthropological sense. The epistemological gap produces an artistic feeling of which the unnatural force involved in the shock of existence is hard to bear. What does the boy know about identity? Is he and Byron the same kind? He thought he was, but now he comes to identify with Theresa, whom Byron left, bringing her back to life and trying to restore her voice. The opera about Byron and his mistress Theresa Lurie is working on reflects his own predicament. Once immersed in false identification with the Eros of Byron, he finds it has “fail[s] to engage the core of him” (181). Then, he tries to identity with the Eros of the
precocious women, the young Theresa, but now comes to claim the Theresa in middle age (181). The identification of “kind” is much more veiled, complicated, and
suffering than the face. Does not that Eros to drive into the woman’s body and bring the future into being arouse from the motivation to prove one’s own authenticity and existence? The conversation tackles on the nexus between violating the norm and identity. And yet, the unnatural in the act of incest is of different level. It points out
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that pregnancy means the sprouting of something disobey human principle. Lurie’s fear of Lucy’s pregnancy strangely provides a false parallel to his previous belief:
woman does not own herself (Beauty does not own itself). The pregnancy does not owned by Lucy, but by the outer force of the universal law. His romantic measure and verdict for erotic experience is crushed by the horror of a newly born life. While the preferences and dislikes of one’s Eros characterizes one’s identity, serving as a string to its kind, pregnancy, womb, physical body seem to be something that does not belong to the self. Returning back to the question I lay before, what constitutes the difficulties of restoring a relationship of humanity after inhuman sexual experience depends on what constitutes the Eros and how the Eros finds its appropriate outlet that is often through the most humiliating manner, while one wishes to genuinely
encounter with another person.
Whence does Lurie’s trauma come from? Does it come from Lucy’s rape? Does it come from the fact that she denies the rape so as to leave him alone in the traumatic experience? Does it come from the rape or does it come from the gap between him and Lucy?
Lurie, out of a sense of anxiety, is curious of why Lucy, his daughter, who inherits from his middle-class, intellectual background, comes to identify herself with the working-class of the black community and her white working-class friends. While he and his ex-wife remain in the city, Lucy chooses the path of being a modern farmer (71). The girl “whom once upon a time he used to drive to school and ballet class, to the circus and the skating rink” not only “shows him this other, unfamiliar world”
(71), but also inevitably brings conflict to his own fatherly authoritative power. Lurie experiences the Erosion of his sense of belonging less through the attack of the three black men than from Lucy’s turning back from him. The attack by the three black men
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is not just on his daughter but also on his own identity as a white middle-class person, which he feels his daughter shares with. Without a revenge on them he would not be human. This need for a revenge generates from his own desire to protect his
subjectivity. And the rejection by his daughter not only risks throwing doubts on the authenticity of her traumatic memory but also the authenticity of her his own personal reality. Lucy’s marriage to Petrus is like abandoning her identity and surrendering to a bigger force which he fears will envelope their life but over which he feels powerless.
Lurie is terrified that Lucy’s ignorance of the power relations involved in the marriage will make her sacrifice herself to Petrus’s own benefits. But what is more significant is that Lurie will have to betray his initial object a and diverts to identify with the new object a constructed by the new order of the farm, which results in identity
transformation. The conflict in Disgrace is less a clash of civilization than a war of generations and social classes.
The different attitudes of dealing with this calamity between David and Lucy illuminates the war of kinship as well as the power relation between family
inheritance/burden and identity. While Lucy chooses to go with the flow, that is, she exchanges her properties and material body for Petrus’ protection, Lurie indulges himself in composing his opera. In “Pursuing Ghosts: The Traumatic Sublime in J.M.
Coetzee’s Disgrace” Segall argues that “the protagonist’s vision of an obscure figure not only symbolizes a mnemonic wound, but also serves a protective, psychological shield. The word “obscure” etymologically rooted in “covering” or “imperfectly illuminating.”---applies to the traumatic sublime, because when the character envisions a ghostly body, this new image blurs the initial trauma event, fostering detachment (Italic added)” (43). It is because the memory site serves as powerful signifier in one’s psychic structure. This psychic structure involves with his
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recognition of their state of victimization which Lucy refuses to recognize. Her obscure attitude toward rape affects his narrative of identity.
In fact, David Lurie’s desire to return to, or establish, a status of victimization can be attested by his persistence on resorting to the police system. Unlike his unemotional daughter, he is much more threatened by the usurption of Petrus. The rape of Lucy is not just her traumatic experience, but also a deeply unsettling experience for Lurie for it becomes an obscure memory site he can never fully decipher. Lucy repudiates her state of victimization obliquely, which can be told by her explaination of the rape as debt collection. When she reports to the police, she reduces the essential length of time of the whole incident. Hearing this, Lurie remarks secretly to himself “an untruth, as he knows, as she knows. It took much longer. How much longer? As much longer as the men needed to finish of their business with the lady of the house” (108). What is more, she leaves out the substantial details of rape.
If the constitutive elements of the crime are left out, it does not construct the plot.
Nothing as rape does take place at that point. Due to the ambiguity of Lucy’s desire, Lurie is more like the helpless orphan in the new condition. The absence of rape destroys the appearance of the signifying space of Lurie’s psychic reality.
At the same time, Lucy also represents the different voice of the other culture. “I cannot be a child for ever. You cannot be a father forever. I know you mean well, but you are not the guide I need, not at this time.” Why does not Lucy ask the police for help? For one thing, the police are unable to catch the rapists; for another, they have lost their force in this land. The white law does not domineer over the pastoral culture.
If she askes for the protection of the government, she will have to leave her land. The punishment on the rapists does not lead to the recognition of her own sexuality nor the empowerment of her traumatized identity. As a homosexual, a fact that is obscurely
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indicated in the novel, her sexuality, her ideals, and her needs can bring her to
nowhere. No matter what kind of strategies she uses in trying to maintain her estate, it is Patrus who is able to provide her with safety and social position in the new post-apartheid reality. She seems to be the lady of Petrus house, but in fact, she is merely the “bare life” which is guarded, protected, decided by the sovereignty of Petrus. The road to freedom does not come through her originality or capacity, but her choices. In contradiction, Lurie believes in individualistic ideals and imaginative skills.
Lucy’s surrender to Petrus’s family poses a threat to Lurie’s domineering psychic system. Lurie demonstrates the general contempt in the patriarchal system for those women who have apparently lost their physical attractiveness. Physical attractiveness also represents certain aspects of psychic power. In “The Politics of Shame and Redemption in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace” Sue Kossew wrotes, “Disgrace is a novel in which bodies are strongly linked to desire, power, and disgrace” (156). Kossew emphasizes the aspect of male characters excercising their power over those who have not, but the bodies that are excluded under sovereignty lack a proper treatment with respect to power relations. She accepts rape so natural as if this is what she has to pay for staying in the place makes her state ambiguous. Lucy’s choice is mysterious, meaningless, and contradictory to the logic of society. The ambiguity of Lucy’s subjectivity afflict Lurie’s sense of subjectivity. Accordingly, the traumatized woman who no longer speaks freely to him is thus transformed into a little girl in a traumatic repetition. “In the middle of the night he awakes in a state of utmost clarity. He has had a vision: Lucy has spoken to him; her words – ‘Come to me, save me!’ – still echo in his ears. In the vision she stands, hands outstretched, wet hair combed back, in a field of white light” (103), suddenly his fully grown daughter becomes the helpless child crying freely for help. The troubling silence is replaced by a simple scenario.
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The traumatic symbolism substantiates the initial trauma, yet it does not represent the initial trauma. It substantiate the trauma in the imaginal realm that still holds a distance to the real realm. The symbolism, or the imaginary substitution, will inevitably invokes a durality of effects on the protagonist, that is, the reductive emotional detachment as well as a desirous return to the victimization. It
simultaneously reduces the unbearable emotions of victimization but also attest the longing of the protagonist to validate his past experience. Lucy’s obscure desire provides a twist to Lurie’s indentity forming.
Why could not he understand his daughter? Is it because of their gender? Or is it because of the differece in social background? The cultural differeces and the division of social classes are hard to understand. Comparing to these, gender differece seems to be rather universally acknowledged.
While in his own scandal Lurie stands for the irrational voice, he becomes the rational but nonsensical one when arrived at the farm. When the teach-student
relationship goes sore, Lurie tells Melanie that he cannot have her male friend disrupts his class and that she must attends class more regularly (34), unable to recognize their relation is renew. “Responsibilities: she does not dignify the word with a reply (35),”
implicating a crisis of responsibilities laying at the core of Disgrace. Secondly, refusing to subjugate to the new postcolonial order, he “prefer[s] simply to be put against a wall and shot” rather than being “castrated”: “recantation, self-criticism, public apology” (66). Finally, he comes to the farm to “gather himself, gather his forces” (121), but he forgets the South African pastoral is rewriting its order as well.
This place does not rule a pastoral, ländliche life, a place where he could retreat to and stay focus on his romantic self. He is the rebellist of political system at once, but turns to be the protector of police system, that is, the postcolonial justice, the
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westerner way of doing things (202), during the aftermath of the attack. In this
respect, Coetzee reveals that it is not about justice at all when it comes to dealing with justice. When he wishes his daughter could call for the police, it is not about justice but the fundamental sense of his identity as father figure. In the literally sense of father figure, he wishes his daughter could gain something from familial inheritance, much of it refers to his social responsibility as an intellectual; another layer is of the symbolic, he wishes to be the guidance of his daughter in the world. But to make the narratives of father figures working depends on the submission and obligation of his daughter. The patriarchal norms is reciprocally depended on and powerfully
determined by femininity. In the novel, the patriarcal symbolic structure shows its manisfestation through interpreting the act of rape in the vein of victimization.
Ironically, resorting to police system means denouncing an evil that is constituted by the law of patrical system. Through the act of denouncement it is constituting and validating in reciproal the signified of its psychic system. Lurie becomes part of the moral surveillance he once opposed to. In other words, the rape reveals itself as being part of the signifier in the signifying system of the father. Only when the accident of rape is validated, he can be sure of his own state of victimization and Lucy’s. The discourse of victim and attackers can be established. However, it turns out that both he and Lucy are unsure in the present living condition. Unwilling to explain her feelings to him, Lucy refuses to be assimilated to the discourse of the father. Being the memory sites, her silence causes the disruption of Lurie egotistical psychic system, but remains as an indescribable fragment that belongs to another big picture. Through divulging his desire to assimilate into Teresa (whom Byron left) in his opera, the novel signifies the possibility that the self is an other. The self that discovers a more authentic outlet through the other.
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In response to Lurie’s nostalgic call for white power, Lucy bequeathes her farm, a symbol of legacy, to Petrus. About the lost car, another symbol of deprival of power, she shows no haste to claim it back. She knows it is a sign of betrayal to her father: “I know I am not being clear. I wish I could explain. But I can’t. Because of who you are and who I am, I can’t. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about your car. I’m sorry about the disappointment” (155). Lucy’s refuse to posit herself in the position of victim
signifies a refute to Lurie’s moral surveillance as well as its denial and invisibility of her subjectivity. Through fortifying the binary stability of victim and rapist, cultured and brutal, the novel points out it lacking the proper treatment to the character Lucy with respect to her sexual identity. To configure her traumatic experience as a wholeness, any theory is oblidged to treat her subjugation to the new system as a positive act, not just subjugating her trauma to the victimization in all forms. It is imperative to redeem Lucy’s traumatic experience from Lurie’s romantic sublimation so as to spare judging the heart of the dead thence. Additionally, it is crucial to redeem Lucy’s desire and sexual identity from Lurie’s conceptualization of gender. Whenever Lurie wants to fight for his egocentric sublime, he immediately feels a sense of
disgrace in claiming his sense of identity. The irony lays in the fact that a revelation of his self is also a defeat of his conviction. He is ashamed of his existence which is why he keeps saying his is an old man.
Due to the fact that Lurie does not understand how materials and physical body intertwine with Eros, Lurie displays a rather cynic kind of nothingness in both his arts and opinions. On the other hand, the nothingness Lucy divulges is prone to be more practical and constructive. Its goal is clear: destructions to all kind of preconceived abstractions including morality, power, and knowledge constructed in the vein of historiography. The nuanced touch on Lucy’s emotions produces a mystical space
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whereby we can explore the furthest reaches of what it means to be human. The fiery reaction of Soraya, the avoidance of Melanie, and the indifference of Lucy all signify a fact that female are always victim under certain projections of meaning from the society. The “truth” Lurie tries to normalize rashly belongs to the power struture and hence it constructs and replicates more “truths” in reciprocity through distributing its power into administration. Although such distribution of power also presents in the
whereby we can explore the furthest reaches of what it means to be human. The fiery reaction of Soraya, the avoidance of Melanie, and the indifference of Lucy all signify a fact that female are always victim under certain projections of meaning from the society. The “truth” Lurie tries to normalize rashly belongs to the power struture and hence it constructs and replicates more “truths” in reciprocity through distributing its power into administration. Although such distribution of power also presents in the