語言與後殖民主體：J.M. 柯慈《屈辱》中的權力倒轉 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士論文. 指導教授：陳音頤教授 Advisor: Dr. Eva Yin-I Chen. 立. 政治大中文題目. ‧ 國. 學. 語言與後殖民主體：J.M. 柯慈《屈辱》中的權力倒轉. ‧. 英文題目. y. Nat. sit. Language and the Post-colonial Subject:. n. al. er. io. Reversals of Power in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. 研究生：林俞君 Name: Alice Yu-Chun Lin 中華民國一 ○ 八年七月 July 2019. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(2) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(3) LANGUAGE AND THE POST-COLONIAL SUBJECT: REVERSALS OF POWER IN J. M. COETZEE’S DISGRACE. A Master Thesis Presented to Department of English. 政治大. 立 National Chengchi University ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. i Un. Ch. v. In Partial e n g Fulfillment chi. of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. by Alice Yu-Chun Lin July 2019. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.


(5) To Dr. Yin-I Chen and my beloved family. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(6) Acknowledgement The path of a four-year study has finally come to an end. It was like a dream. It all started with a desperate need to express my superfluous emotions, making them tangible, meaningful with sound arguments. Because if you keep your bruised self hidden, it makes your heart ache. Though I always feel lonely and inadequate, no happiness could compare to the one I found in composing this thesis. And it was not until I finished it did I make myself believe that I am capable of “writing”. So the first person I owe many thanks to is my advisor Professor Yin-I Chen, who gave me the freedom of writing I crave. Her warm comments enabled me to take ownership of this. 政治大. project. What she said in my final defense means a lot to me. I would also like to. 立. thank the rest of my thesis committee: Dr. Chien-Chi Liu and Dr. Min-Hua Wu.. ‧ 國. 學. Thank you for your precious comments. My appreciation goes to a few writers, all of. ‧. whom I address as my secret “advisors” – Kenzaburō Ōe, Yi-Hsuan Chang and YiHen Lin. Their motivations and powerful insights inspire me greatly to pursue a. y. Nat. er. io. sit. creative career. Tremendous gratitude I owe to my Tunghai gang: Monica, Wendy, Ariel and Brendan. Life is better with their warm companionship. We sparked each. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. other off not only through intellectual discussion on research and lifestyle, but also. engchi. through our enthusiasm and vitality. I thank all the friends whom I have met here – Karie, Huahua, Gloria, Ming-Fang, Tank, Rose and Cathy. My graduate student life would not have been so fulfilling were it not for your participation. A special thanks to Meng-Huan. We used to coworking in café every day, sitting side by side. Thank you for your thoughtful and warmest humor. Of course, I am profoundly in debt to the incredible generosity of my close friends for the troubles I have brought, Keli, Anan, Angel, Roxanne, Ypo and Chiu-Yi. You constantly show your concerns and understanding for me. Lastly, I must express my profound gratitude toward my iv. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(7) family. I thank my parents for letting me pursue a master degree in literature without worrying about living. I thank my brother for being my safe harbor. He is a great spirit. I thank him for navigating me through numerous challenges and bringing hope when I am feeling down from time to time. Despite all the hardships, I feel incredibly blessed to have been given the opportunity to meet with the people who inspire me in different ways. Thank you.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. v. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(8) Table of Contents. Acknowledgement .................................................................................................iv Chinese Abstract ....................................................................................................vii English Abstract .....................................................................................................viii Chapter 1. Introduction .....................................................................................1. Chapter 2. Desires ............................................................................................19. Chapter 3. Post-colonial Psyche........................................................................35. Chapter 4. Post-natural Existence .....................................................................55. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. Conclusion .............................................................................................................69 Works Cited ...........................................................................................................72. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. vi. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(9) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文摘要論文名稱：語言與後殖民主體：J.M.柯慈《屈辱》中的權力倒轉指導教授：陳音頤教授研究生：林俞君論文摘要內容：主體性的脆弱一直是當代學界關注的重要議題之一。在《屈辱》中，柯慈不以人文主義向來由精神、靈魂的角度討論主體，反而以單一肉身、或肉身群. 政治大說以生冷的筆調描繪肉身的困境，呈現南非種族隔離政策解除後，政治情境表立體的角度出發討論暴力如何展現，小小的暴力如何演變為巨大的精神暴力。小. ‧ 國. 學. 面的和平之下隱匿的憤怒。透過第一人稱自省式的敘述，讀者可以發現看似理性的體制運作實則極度不理性，也埋藏許多不合情理之處。透過一場師生戀，. ‧. 一夕之間，主角發現原來的權力關係早已面目全非。而主角本身是一位上了年. sit. y. Nat. 紀的白人教授，本身不合時宜的理念使他品嘗戲劇化的文化衝突。後半部主角. n. al. er. io. 離開城市抵達未開發的黑人農莊，看似離開了過往，然而發生在女兒身上突如. v. 其來的強暴實際上反映了大環境的不安。貫穿柯慈小說的始終都是國家暴力。. Ch. engchi. i Un. 過往學者常將女性置之於被動且壓抑的位置討論這本小說。然而，筆者認為強暴作為小說的子題，凸顯的還是國家以法律、規則形塑一個道德威權，以此教育、強壓人民。而被動接納強暴，融入當地，確實是重新翻轉了西方的道德觀。筆者試圖透過分析慾望與良知的關聯，從而反省西方理性陽剛的道德威權。在充滿自然與非自然力量、暴力、鬼魅無所不在南非，主角得以從失去個人力量的自我感中解放，並重新理解人性。. 關鍵字：J.M.柯慈、《屈辱》、慾望、道德、後殖民心境、權威. vii. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(10) Abstract The fragile status of subjectivity has been a popular subject in modern society. Coetzee’s Disgrace, for instance, explores the predicament of the modern soul. The novel depicts a brutal image of social conflict, which contains the theme of rape, abuse of power and eventually the reversals of power. In Disgrace, Coetzee creates one of the egocentric and self-indulgent white male, who is the product of Western individualism in the post-apartheid South Africa. His conflict between the moral standard and conscience highlights the questionable effect of justice over the. 政治大 far from being merely an impulse, suggest authenticity when confronting moral 立. subordinates. I observe that Eros is the dominant force in terms of morality. Desire,. ‧ 國. 學. question. Hence, by exploring desires in a new light, the strong connection between desires and conscience is explicitly revealed. Chapter three will be a study of Lucy’s. ‧. knowledge after being sexually colonized by her neighbors. I draw on a few scenes to. sit. y. Nat. discuss the Foucaldian power relationship that lies in the core of Lucy’s. n. al. er. io. subordination. What’s more, Lucy’s attitude also indicates that justice is not the main. i Un. v. concern for the victim. A peel to the false distribution of justice leads us further to. Ch. engchi. reflect the truth if moral convention is merely grounded on recognition of responsibility in the system. I claim that it should be interpreted as a strategy for subverting the mainstream discourse of Western moralization. The aftermath of rape brings not just pain but also a source of isolated culture owned by the colonized character. By exploiting predator and victim stereotypes, Coetzee highlights the relative value of different ideologies, which is the blind spot of Western individualism. Chapter four will be a study of the post-apartheid culture in South Africa with an emphasis on body-and-soul relations. In all, I have tried to bring out viii. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(11) the merits of rape with a literary and philosophical approach. By depicting a wanderer in the inner sense, Coetzee intelligently enriches the meaning of Western individualism. A representation of personal violence reveals not the disruptiveness of the coherent moral structure but the enhanced rationalism that ultimately strike back the authority itself. Keywords: J.M.Coetzee; Disgrace; Eros; Desire; Moral; Post-colonial Psyche; Authority. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. ix. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.


(13) Chapter 1 Introduction J.M. Coetzee was born in Cape Town to an Afrikaner family. He is the descendant of the early Dutch immigrants to South Africa. Although having been the recipient of numerous awards such as Booker prizes throughout his career, Coetzee has also gained a reputation for avoiding publicity and award ceremonies. Besides publishing numerous fictions based on South Africa, Coetzee is also known as a cold. 政治大 development of South Africa, a country with which he retains strong emotional ties. 立. and fastidious thinker and academic critic. Coetzee’s work often reflects the political. ‧ 國. 學. In 2003, when Coetzee was announced to be the recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature, the Swedish Academy commended that he “in innumerable guises portrays. ‧. the surprising involvement of the outsider.”1 He often creates his characters as well-. sit. y. Nat. educated dissidents differentiated from the mob. However, the narrating voice often. al. er. io. expresses a rather negative and dispiriting sentiment. It is difficult to make a definite. n. iv n C be sure, Coetzee does not intendh toe build i Ustanding out of difficult times nor n gupcahhero. conclusion of whether the attitude of his literary world is progressive or backward. To. does he intend to convey an optimistic, dynamic, and vital message to his readers. In Disgrace, the protagonist is made to believe that he is being abandoned by his times after the attack of the three intruders. Not until the novel reaches its climax does the protagonist merely sense that his daily life is kind of weird, to an extent that he believes something in his life is crumbling. People are living in an era, yet this era is gradually sinking into the darkness. During the time of post-apartheid, the old values. 1. See https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2003/ 1. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(14) are collapsing, while the new order is developing. One of his strategies for the protagonist to keep his self-belief is to isolate himself from other people. As an English professor in the University of Cape Town, David Lurie does things in unequivocal terms before the catastrophes strikes on him. One of the writing strategies Coetzee favors is to explore the theme of the outcast through exploiting racist stereotypes. He chooses the form of straightforward description of colonial brutality, the savage, sexual violence, repression, the corrupted representation of Althusserian apparatus and the intensity between different power relations. It is through depicting violence that he is able to dig into and present the. 政治大. raw emotions he has found lacking in modern South African literature. In his award. 立. ceremony speech for the Jerusalem Prize, Coetzee stressed the limitations of art in. ‧ 國. 學. South African society, whose structure had resulted in “deformed and stunted. ‧. relations between human beings” and “a deformed and stunted inner life.” He went on to state that “South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less than fully. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. in prison.”2. sit. human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write. Ch. i Un. v. Coetzee is strongly sensitive to the political power that his language will arouse.. engchi. However, it is the language of politics that he finds repellent. As a result, Coetzee establishes the absolute priority of the raw materials of different ethnic presence over any existing political power and image. He registers the hatred, the barbarous, and the agony in the backdrop of his novels, which are all set during either the apartheid times between 1948 and 1994, or the imaginary times soon after the apartheid. Through depicting the high-heated racial conflict of South Africa and the attacks on. 2. See “Coetzee, Getting prize, Denounces Apartheid.” The New York Times. 2. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(15) individuals, he has a way of cutting into the mentality of the outcast. In Life and Times of Michael K (1983), Michael K is the nomadic spirit, who resigns from his gardener job in Cape Town and carries his mother back to her hometown in Prince Albert, located in the Southern edge, during the imaginary civil war in the 1970s to 1980s. All the way to the desolate farm in Prince Albert, Michael K repeats the cycle of being institutionalized by townspeople and the police and then fleeing from his work places. More than once Michael K is incorporated into the labor force under the authority of residual colonial power. After sixteen years, when South Africa has already canceled its Apartheid policy, Coetzee writes another book, which also. 政治大. concerns the outcast of the times, namely Disgrace (1999). This time, Coetzee. 立. focuses on the privileged white characters who are distinguished from the socially. ‧ 國. 學. marginalized Michael K, with his black identity and physical deformity. Coetzee. ‧. seems to say that both the two ethnic groups are the victims of its own state power for different reasons. Represented as a post-colonial subject, white characters as well as. y. Nat. General Reception of Coetzee and His Novels. n. al. Ch. er. io. sit. black characters are forced to abandon their original identity and take on the new one.. i Un. v. Coetzee is highly controversial both for his position as a writer and for his books. engchi. due to their volatile nature. In fact, his works often portray the two opponents within the main battlefield, the diverse attitudes of the external world and his own country. Awarded Nobel Prize and two Booker Prizes for Life and Times of Michael K (1983) and Disgrace (1999), Coetzee is internationally acclaimed around the English speaking world. Yet his books do not necessarily catch as much attention at his home as in foreign countries. None of his literary colleagues such as Nadine Gordimer has aroused such great dispute as him. The first controversial point lies in the debate over whether he belongs to the 3. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(16) category of “South African writer.” It seems that being regarded as a “South African novelist” is a trap for any native South African who wishes to provide different voices and a literary reality that is beyond the political and the regional. Undoubtedly, South Africa is his hometown. Yet his own people do not consider his novels regional literature, or as representative canon for the cultural development of South Africa. The second issue lies in the description of his novels, particularly Disgrace, which is considered to be racist by the native people. Coetzee had a clash with the ruling African National Congress over his novel Disgrace, after which he left South Africa. He received hardly more supportive response from his literary colleagues. Nadine. 政治大. Gordimer said in an interview in Johannesburg in 2006, “I find it difficult to believe,. 立. indeed more than difficult, having lived here all my life and being part of everything. ‧ 國. 學. that has happened here, that the black family protects the rapist because he is one of. ‧. them.” She went on to say, “if that is the only truth he could find in the post-apartheid South Africa, I regretted this very much for him.” 3 However, other critics from the. y. Nat. er. io. sit. English-speaking countries do not agree. Scholars read it as a novel of cultural differences, which provides a resourceful background for exploration. I believe that. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. the writer is not supposed to solve existing political problem, but to display real. engchi. social, historical, and psychic predicaments. Even Coetzee denies making realism his art form. To put it simply, both Coetzee and his novels have multiple identities and remain unsettling. Plot Analysis This thesis focuses on Disgrace, where J.M. Coetzee creates one of the most representative egocentric and self-indulgent white male characters. As the story. 3. See “Out of South Africa.” The New York Times. 4. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(17) begins, the English professor at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, is rejected by the exotic prostitute, Soraya, after he sees her on the street with her two children. Deeply affected by such rejection, David turns to pick on another substitute for Soraya in his rendezvous. He looks upon Melanie Isaacs, a student in his Romantic poetry class. When Melanie cannot stand the pressure of their affair and refuses to take the test, David forges her grade. The affair is revealed and he is summoned before a committee of inquiry. He is willing to plead guilty to the charges, but refuses to issue a statement in the spirit of repentance. The committee decides that they could not pardon him and asks him to leave on the grounds of forgery, abuse of power and sexual harassment.. 立. 政治大. Having made up his mind, David retreats to his daughter Lucy’s smallholding,. ‧ 國. 學. which is some miles outside the town of Salem. Born in an intellectually alive family. ‧. in Cape Town, Lucy chooses to be a young emigrant to the bare and wild land in the countryside. The plot indicates that she is a lesbian. In her twenties, Lucy dignifies. y. Nat. er. io. sit. her independence with her peasant lifestyle. She has an assistant and a co-proprietor named Petrus. Prepared to settling for a while, David starts doing volunteering job at. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. Bev’s animal shelter. In fact, what Bev is actually doing is putting unwanted animals. engchi. down. Spoiled by the city and English culture and imperialism, David shows disdain toward Lucy’s rural lifestyle and to what her friends are doing. He considers Bev’s community service job pretentious because yielding to it seemly means that he is making compensation for his misdeed. Luckily, Lucy still convinces her father to give Bev a hand. Witty as she is, Lucy is able to respond nimbly to her father’s hubris and outrageous opinions, which gradually softens that hard spot in David’s mind. Just as life begins to come back on track, a disastrous fate strikes on them: three unknown black men break into their house, set him on fire, shoot all the dogs in the 5. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(18) cage, and gang-rape Lucy. They drive off in David’s car and are never caught. Lucy gets pregnant by one of the rapists. Even worse, it turns out that a retarded adolescent who has joined in the crime is Petrus’s kinsman. David pressures her to press the charge and leave this area. Before the attack happens, David believed guilt should not be the concern of public affairs, which is why he refuses to give a sincere statement in the previous sexual harassment incident. However, the brutality of the savages suddenly justifies every attempt of retribution and violence. He looks forward to justice from the state authority. Lucy, on the other hand, becomes apathetic after the attack. Ignoring David’s suggestion, she insists on reconstructing her farm rather than. 政治大. moving to Europe. The catastrophe further aggravates Lucy’s insensitivity and. 立. aphasia. Lucy refuses to give a full account of the circumstances to the police or. ‧ 國. 學. translate her experience to her father. She decides to stay in the farm and accept. ‧. Petrus’ proposal of marriage in exchange for protection by Petrus’s family. David goes back to town, and finds his apartment has been broken into during. y. Nat. io. sit. his long absence. Later, he attempts to apologize to Melanie’s father but finds himself. n. al. er. again attracted to Melanie’s younger sister. In the end, he returns to Lucy’s farm and. Ch. i Un. v. works with Bev Shaw. He has been keeping a crippled stray dog away from. engchi. euthanasia, but he decides to “give him up” at last.. This novel treats many complicated issues such as rape, violence, abuse of power, authority, public and private area, cultural conflict, etc. The storyline has a clear boundary according to the timeline. In the beginning, it is set in the campus and city, and then shifts to the countryside in the middle. The chief questions posed in the novel are: firstly, why do both storylines start with rape and end up with rape? Does teacher-and-student affair count as a public issue? Melanie is above twenty years old, an age that can no longer be seen as “Lolita.” Why does the affair arouse so much 6. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(19) dispute? What really provokes people? What do people expect of a professor? How does the shift of social position after what happens to his daughter change Lurie’s condition? How does the shift of situation bring change to his perspective? Will the two rapes arouse different reactions from people? Why? How do the incidents challenge morality? Why does Lucy keep silent? What kind of revelation does Lucy have after the disaster? What is the difference between subjugation and slavery? These questions will be the focus of analysis in my thesis. Literature Review Basically, Disgrace is considered as cosmopolitan literature rather than regional. 政治大. literature, which retains an perpetual allure to scholars. Scholarship on the novel has. 立. often covered issues such as apartheid, postcolonialism, racism, feminism, desire,. ‧ 國. 學. death, and subjectivity. The discussion of postcolonialism can be subdivided into. ‧. colonial guilt, white anxieties, national hysteria, and colonial horror fantasies. According to Clive Barnett’s “Construction of Apartheid” (the second author is. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Coetzee himself), Disgrace is so popular in the research field because it helps the West to construct the world of apartheid and proceed on developing a moral critique,. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. making it universally intelligible to non-African readers in an era of globalization.. engchi. Barnett argues that this moralization is an attempt of negotiating the space between the West and South Africa during apartheid (Barnett 290). Such a cosmopolitan view depends upon familiar representation of the relations between the isolated territory (South Africa) and the international area. However, the political narratives, which rely on origins of postcolonialism studies, have reached a degree of saturation. Recently, the emerging discourse of postcolonialism diverts its direction with much more cultural practices. Critics like Derek Attridge, David Attwell have already pointed out that a process of intellectual colonization is ongoing, 7. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(20) which leads to unsolved problems of racial conflict. Still, what exactly constitutes the forces behind the unspeakable and the unconscious needs more detailed analysis. In Disgrace, both white people and black people are overwhelmed by some kinds of forces or power. In “Age of Bronze, State of Grace,” Attridge claims that the protagonist is “overmastered by a power that exceeds and interrupts the rationalization of his age” (Attridge 117). This thesis takes the view that the black culture affecting the black characters in the novel is also dominated by an overwhelming natural, or supernatural force, a force that often takes the form of brutality. I would like to argue that such brutality serves as a subversive power that. 政治大. disrupts the creed of individualism long cherished by the white culture and white. 立. characters like Lurie and his academic colleagues. This link between the theme of. ‧ 國. 學. postcolonial mentality and the cognitive conflict of individualism has not been. ‧. explored by critics. By cognitive conflict of individualism, I mean when one insists on practicing individualism in all aspects, he will certainly come to contradict its own. y. Nat. er. io. sit. logic. Forceful individualism, represented by the white Europeans, clashes with the native black culture of clan and family in South African society, and adds to the. n. al. conflict in the novel.. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. In Lucy Valerie Graham’s frequently cited paper, she argues that Disgrace performs a subversion of “black peril” narratives, even with its explicit exposure of “black peril” stereotypes (Graham 433). The first aspect of this topic is about the relation between sexual colonization and colonial mapping. In fact, David’s history of desiring exotic female indicates the residue of “white peril” that prevails under colonialism, which is also related to South African pastoral mode that frequently occurs in white writing. Pastoral life has been regarded as utopia in post-colonial literature. Graham argues that Disgrace is anti-pastoral since it exposes the 8. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(21) appropriation of female body and land in pastoral narratives. Therefore, she interprets Lucy’s refusal to report the crime as an extreme refusal to play a part in colonial context. The second aspect of “white peril” pertains to the issues of rape and its representations over the history of Western literature. Graham emphasizes the way in which poetic language is used transform the abuse and desire into something acceptable from a humanitarian view, misleading reader to overlook the seriousness of rape. She believes this is a writing of disgrace, bringing readers emotionally and mentally involved in the crime scene. This is not only exploiting the female, but also perversely appropriates the value of literature. Such writing device is obvious in. 政治大. Disgrace that it brings conflict into the interaction between David and Melanie.. 立. Graham criticizes both Attridge and Albert du Toit’s view of seeing their. ‧ 國. 學. relationship as an “affair.” In fact, Coetzee, as Graham points out, shows his. ‧. awareness of the moral complexity of representing sexual violence (Graham 441). In my opinion, Coetzee approaches the theme of rape the other way round. In the novel,. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Coetzee makes David Lurie, the “focaliser” of the story as well as a privileged English professor, half-intentionally demonstrate this seductive power of literary. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. representations in the scene which he seduces Melanie. It is notable that Coetzee does. engchi. not describe rape and seduction in the form of art. Instead, he describes a scenario in which David masters and treats Melanie with the art of poetic language during the whole process of seduction. In this way, he creates a distance between the scene of seduction and the reader. While other writers compose sexual violence into a sympathetic and exciting literary piece, Coetzee demystifies the atrocity, restoring the site of suffering, and turns it into philosophical project. By uniting the aesthetic and the ethical, as Graham claims, Coetzee dissolves the clear boundaries of identity between David and the men who rape Lucy. 9. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(22) In “Reading the Unspeakable” Graham points out the disgrace of narratives in the context of colonialism, which includes only male perspective. She claims that even though Lucy exhibits the power to withhold her story, it does not empower her but only means that her story belongs to the rapists. The predicament of Melanie and Lucy shows to a historical circumstance where female are not encouraged to articulate, and thus, as Graham argues, collude with perpetrators. Body violates another body; the male-authorized texts, or the rapist’s story, violates another soul. To take a step further, moral ambivalence of the male author is caught in his representations of subjectivity and masculinity (Graham 441), which is displayed by the conceited protagonist.. 立. 政治大. However, there are two points I find doubtful in Graham’s paper. The first one is. ‧ 國. 學. her interpretation about the representation of Melanie as a victim. Of course, if the. ‧. story is focalized through the rapist, then the violation is presented luridly and unevenly. However, there are times when Lurie thinks he and Melanie are real couple.. y. Nat. io. sit. He describes the intercourse as “not quite” rape, but for her part “undesired to the. n. al. er. core.” At this time, the narrative’s viewpoint seems to be located outside of Lurie,. Ch. i Un. v. which indicates that the narrative voice and the focaliser can be distanced. Lurie. engchi. shows no absolute unawareness of Melanie’s undesirability and he acknowledges that he cannot control everything. The only thing he can control is her attendance and grade, which latter serves as powerful proof for his crime. Melanie stands in the socially inferior position and does not give an account for her part. Yet, this does not mean she is the victim. Lurie is the one punished by Althusserian apparatus. What’s more, due to his high social status, he receives heavier penalty. In Disgrace, the seemly powerful and privileged character suffered under political power. It is also noteworthy that Lurie’s account in the inquiry is not helpful at all. He is not 10. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(23) condemned for rape but for abusing his power. Moreover, it does not mean that the socially vulnerable individual, or the helpless, will not profit from Althusserian apparatus. Melanie, standing in the inferior position, possess the right to claim for redemption from Lurie. The victim is protected by Althusserian apparatus while the rapist is punished. As a result, the absence of the victim’s statement does not necessarily collude with the perpetrator. Neither the rapist nor the victim dominate the narratives in the case of Lurie and Melanie. As Jeffery Cass observes in his essay, “Rape as Debt: The Incineration of Romanticism,” the issue of rape is actually displayed as a trigger to challenge white. 政治大. hegemony and establish new orders in post-apartheid South Africa. Cass points out. 立. that, for half of his life, Lurie has lived a life removed from the racial politics and. ‧ 國. 學. cultural transformation in contemporary South Africa. His debased role as a. ‧. “Communications” professor and his lately academic publications about opera, vision as Eros, and Wordsworth all mark him as socially and culturally alienated. He tries to. y. Nat. io. sit. accomplish his escape through literature and physically through many affairs with. n. al. er. women. Lurie becomes a sexual profligate after seeing the presences of Soraya’s. Ch. i Un. v. children. Prostitute and exotic women provide him with physical indulgence and. engchi. spiritual exile so he can get rid of the burden of reality. Cass argues that the desire to escape becomes his emotional and ideological motivation. It is his fierce desire for the Other, referring to Melanie, whom is vaguely Orientalized in Coetzee’s description of her, provokes Lurie’s university, as a capitalist enterprise. Therefore, Lurie appears almost “heroic” in saying no to the State’s representatives. However, the country does not allow him to pursue the impulsive and his Romantic ideas because he must adjust his Romantic sensibilities to match the actual landscape and cultural environment. The aftermath of the attack compels Lurie to deal with the reality, from which he has 11. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(24) been escaping. Both realities is trying to modify and regulate his freedom of mind. Cass argues what truly fascinates is the “response” to Lucy’s rape because all the social, political, and cultural implications suggest the reversals of power in white and black context. That Lucy decides to marry Petrus, despite her lesbian identity, “confirms the integration of Lurie and Lucy’s sexual otherness within the new paradigm”. (41) Cass states that it is disturbing to see Lucy regards rape as debt to stay in Africa and that rape is naturalized and rationally reconstructed. For Lucy’s part, Lurie is no longer the paternal guide because the norms paternal guide is grounded has shifted. In the anti-Romanticism land, Lurie, “orientalizing himself as. 政治大. harijan” (42), finds no productive way of giving himself to the world but servicing. 立. only the dead. The shift of social status helps Lurie to find his new identity, which he. ‧ 國. 學. once fails to accomplish in the mainstream annoyance of Cape Town, in the. ‧. tumultuous black society. For Cass, Lurie literally incinerates his Romantic proclivities in the re-colonized land, where there is “no existential maturation, no. y. Nat. er. al. n. Chapter Organization. io. sublime” (43).. sit. modified grace, no sadder-but-wiser insight” (43), but “the bitter end of Romantic. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. These are some of the issues I would explore in this thesis. In the first part of Chapter Two, I will first elucidate what are the representations of individualism when Lurie is dealing with his troubles at university, where some people see his affair as rape or crime, and also what is his response to his daughter’s rape. As a product of Western individualism, Lurie finds himself running into the similar fate of Oedipus, for he appears to be heroic when he stands up against the moral surveillance of the jury, but is hit back on the face when he moves to Lucy’s smallholding and finds individualism no longer works. His own standard of thinking and dealing with matters 12. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(25) cannot adjust to the clan-based black culture. Lurie is not only individualistic but also an outcast during the rise of multiculturalism and neo-capitalism. Therefore, I attempt to trace the reasons of what might cause oneself to lose force and initiative in postapartheid South Africa. Though appearing to be remarkably aloof and tacit, he is intrinsically a symbol of defeated masculinity. Why does Lurie feel frustrated in the beginning of Disgrace? Why is he feeling unwanted by his times? After undergoing a series of frustrations, he indulges himself in sexual adventures. He is thoroughly a man of Romanticism, looking forward to Romantic ideologies such as redemption. What is the motivation for an individual to commit a forbidden act? His new role as. 政治大. “communications” professor has debased his character. How does disgrace link to his. 立. identity? Lurie does not simply indulge in the short-lived pleasure of sexual crime.. ‧ 國. 學. The desire to escape from reality is precisely why he indulges himself into sexual. ‧. adventures, hoping that he could unite the distorted inner self with outer reality. The frustration of reality leads him to further pursuing other desires such as physical. y. Nat. er. io. sit. desire and imagining a life that follows his ideology.. The second part of Chapter Two will rely on the cognitive conflict of. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. individualism. The chief questions posed in the novel of this section are: through the. engchi. act of rationalization, people are able to construct their own identity. Writing in the first person perspective, however, Lurie does not successfully develop knowledge about himself and his world through connecting and organizing the incidents and his thoughts. In the vein of social position to identity forming, he finds he is unable to imagine the position of Lucy, whom represents the creation of transcultural forms. Why does individualism clash with South African society? How is male identity presented as a representation of Western cultural hegemony? Paradoxically, Lurie has to forfeit his identity by withdrawing from his academic position, shifting to that of 13. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(26) dog-man, in order to build a new identity in the country. When Lurie finds that Petrus plays ambiguously the role of accomplice in Lucy’s rape, after trailing evidence like a detective, he discovers it is impossible to punish him by law. The novel portraits, ironically, the aspect of which all rationalization of the materials one uses to understand the world will in fact mislead him. Strongly affected by social position and cultural background, he finds that rationalization and sympathy cannot help a person to figure out his reality. Inspired by Mike Marais’s paper, in which removal from one’s position helps to recognize the Other, I attempt to explore the narratives of epistemology of identity forming in order to find an answer to the dilemma of. 政治大. individualism and rationalization presented in the novel.. 立. Finally, this section will deal with the meaning of existence. The emptiness of. ‧ 國. 學. human relationships prompts Lurie to search for the truth of humanity in sexual. ‧. experience. Living in an extremely racialized society, he suffers from psychological impotence derived from frustration and restriction in human relationship. Lurie’s. y. Nat. er. io. sit. unconscious desire to know more about Soraya is relentlessly rejected by her. Thus, he uses other exotic women to substitute the hollow Soraya left. He thinks he is being. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. honest to himself and his pursuing his earnings, but it is a hallucination. Soraya. engchi. remains forever elusive. His defeated mental state is reflected in his class where he keeps educating students, Lucy, and the committee of inquiry about the concept of Eros and desire. What’s more, there is a particular paragraph about the impulsive affair between Lurie and Melanie which indicates Melanie’s secretive appetite for sexual experience (29). The raw emotions that lurks in the shadows of her silence and resistance seems to suggest that it is not simply rape or scandal but perhaps a longing for otherness. Under the cruel political environment, an individual does not own the freedom to speak and act. Hence, the novel poses the question: should you fight for 14. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(27) your values or not? This part will also elucidate the question why Lurie flees to his affair with Melanie. In what way does the affair comfort him? In the second half of Disgrace, Coetzee portraits actual fierce violence in the transcultural society, which serves as a contrast from the rather peaceful, superficial farce in university. The novel is not only trying to expose the conflict between individual and state, but also the dark sides of multicultural (symbolized by Cape Town) and transcultural society (symbolized by the country). Chapter Three will articulate how Lucy’s attitude toward rape represents the different cultural background of the native clan and family black culture. While Lurie. 政治大. claims to practice his individualistic idea and vision, Lucy expresses the values and. 立. ideas of South African native culture, which is not to rely on concepts or moral. ‧ 國. 學. judgement. Through analyzing images such as field labor, bodily experience,. ‧. pregnancy, the materiality of dwelling on the land, and euthanasia of unwanted animals, I intend to build up the native black culture of the country, a culture of. y. Nat. er. io. sit. savage brutality. In Disgrace, Lucy rejects to do as Lurie says, by resolving the crime through political routes and state invention. She does not regard rape as historical. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. vengeance that merely affects Europeans, but perhaps anyone who decides to inhabit. engchi. here forever. The purpose of the novel is not to replicate and reinforce racial stereotypes, any racialized social structure or economics, or even mock black culture, although it is very possible to provoke misunderstanding with the astonishing plot of a black family protecting the rapist because he is one of them. It seems like rape is not the main issue Coetzee wishes to emphasize in Disgrace. In fact, rape is a trigger that reveals the conflict among different minds of people. To push the idea to an extreme, it is merely an act of breeding in the context of native black culture, which belongs to part of the nature. Therefore, this section aims to illustrate how violence, or perhaps 15. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(28) another greater natural force, dominates this land and propels the storyline. Furthermore, this part will delve into the relationship between Lurie and Lucy. If Lurie represents individualism and self-realization, then Lucy embodies the idea of collectivism or even traditional African culture. The motives of individualism is a rather obvious phenomenon to observe and understand, especially in the first person writing, while that of collectivism remains unintelligible for anyone living in any particular times. The conflict between them epitomizes the conflict of individualism and native culture. In fact, individualism is the product of materialism and city life. It comes only after a certain degree of cultural and material development. However, the. 政治大. early European immigrants colonized the land and forced their own culture on the. 立. African land, replacing its primitive culture, regardless of the discrepancy of. ‧ 國. 學. linguistic, historical and cultural background. After the apartheid policy was. ‧. abolished, black people have re-dominated the landscape, starting to gain back their force and culture. As a young immigrant, Lucy accepts the restoration of such culture,. y. Nat. er. io. sit. which is more natural. Moreover, her pragmatism and pastoral settlement highlight the unrealistic aspect of Lurie. The bare and desolate landscape pushes Lurie to face. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. the reality. The attack and the pastoral life have shaken his Romantic imagination,. engchi. pure ideas, and his archetypes of the mind, which implies a reversal of power. The second part of Chapter Three will focus on the awakening of Lurie, which is inspired by Lucy’s influence and the natural rhythms of the farm. Orientalized himself as harijan (146), Lurie shows some striking change of his attitude. His world no longer includes only his sexual fantasies but also the existence of other people, Lucy, Melanie, Melanie’s father, Petrus, and the attackers. Lurie does not try to escape from reality again, but learn to adapt to it in the frame of passivity. The first step will be to elucidate how Lucy embodies Coetzee’s own worldview and moral critique. Within 16. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(29) Lucy’s mind, rape has been naturalized and rationally constructed, perfectly adapted to the native culture. Lucy is, metaphorically speaking, an outsider, who does not live within the social norms of Western culture, because, normally, a person who suffers from sexual violence is very likely to go through nervous breakdown. However, Lucy refuses to call the three perpetrators “her rapists.” This aspect of her is too disturbing and frightening that it remains unintelligible to critics and readers. However, this aspect confirms to me the idea that Lucy does not only represents herself, the site of a violated mental, but perhaps a thinking, or a vision, of a larger scope of social reformation. Through analyzing Lucy as a hybrid of different consciousness and. 政治大. cultures, I attempt to cut through and interpret the fragile state of subjectivity of Lurie.. 立. Having no choice but to accept her decision, Lurie is able connect to landscape and. ‧ 國. 學. culture of the black farm. What’s more, it also helps him to transform from a merely. ‧. degenerated sexual slave to a person awakening to the wider social and historical field of post-apartheid South Africa. Due to the disturbing attack, Lurie and Lucy are able. y. Nat. er. io. sit. to bring into relief all the inconsistency in their relationship. After the rape of his daughter, Lurie understands how people lose humanity; hence, he understands how to. n. al. preserve humanity.. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. Chapter Four will be my own critique of the worldview of Disgrace and its values and lacks. This part will delve into these questions. What are the limits of the worldview of Disgrace? What does it exclude? The novel is about the conflict between individualism and the new order of post-colonial Africa. Within the imagination of Lurie, there is an invisible state power that tries to regulate and control him. Those seemingly heroically struggling to resist such power add conflict to the racial and social issues on the farm. Is it possible that the systematic problems and the violence of social system constructed in Disgrace is the creation of a fragile and 17. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(30) vulnerable mind who forgets the reality of outer world and the existence of others? Possibly a man as narrow minded as him should think Lucy’s rape is an act of vengeance for history’s sake, just as he regards the atrocity that falls on him is systematic persecution. His individualistic concerns lead to his own hubris and ignorance of secular law, which explains why he imputes his fault to society and social structure. Lucy, on the other hand, expresses a more solid, realistic, and earthly attitude. Perhaps the disgrace Coetzee wants to point out is the disgrace of writing that is generated from a corrupted mind. The intention of his rhetoric is not to build up the truth but merely justify his desire of abusing other women. It is implied in Disgrace. 政治大. that Lurie imagines himself as an incarnation of Byron, who as a Romantic hero has. 立. probably “forced himself upon” many girls in his lifetime. Therefore, Coetzee seems. ‧ 國. 學. to indicate that writing is in fact an approach to resolve one’s sorrow of being. ‧. abandoned by his times, and to contextualize, naturalize, and rationalize desire, anxiety, and fear of his own death.. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. 18. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(31) Chapter 2 Desires Lurie’s repulsive romantic sublimation is an unrealistic attempt to adapt to the new environment of his society. Lurie is set to be an aging protagonist who is no longer desirable in the arena of love. Through his relationship with Melanie, a symbol of relatively desirable Lolita, he is able to comfort his anxiety of existence. But there is a sense of disgrace that lies in the core of his romanticized identity. Disgrace, which comes through a series of repulsive inhibited actions to go against the moral convention and habitual conventions, is a disguise of narcissism. In the committee of. 政治大. inquiry, he claims that he is just being true to his emotions so he acts according to his. 立. nature like an active person. It turns out that Melanie serves as the scapegoat in. ‧ 國. 學. Lurie’s own story. Melanie and Soraya share similar portrait; for instance, they both. ‧. are of foreign descent. After being rejected by Soraya, Lurie picks up Melanie as her substitute who does not have the power to reject him, and is too young to know how. y. Nat. er. io. sit. to deal with him. Rather than driven by the Eros, Lurie is more likely to be provoked by the desire to know the unknown. He has no idea, why, a respectable man as him, as. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. he claims, who is totally capable of keeping her secret safe (6), would receive such. engchi. cold response from Soraya. Though he proves how he has destroyed Melanie’s school life afterwards. Therefore, I think he is just being a pure hedonist in terms of the spiritual field. Contradictory to what he claim assertively (the right of Eros) in front of the inquiry, he said “the company of women made of him a lover of women and, to an extent, a womanizer” (7). Women is a means for him to reassure of his magnetism and masculinity. I argue that he is psychologically impotent, immersing in erotic compensation because he makes women as a means to make himself visible, younger, stronger, and capable. Yet the truth is the only woman Lurie sees regularly is his 19. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(32) favorite prostitute. That is the only constant and stable relationship he could maintain with woman in his private life. Nevertheless, he believes in his masculinity and his power to give her whatever she needs. Vanity is the dizziness of masculinity. The novel points out that Lurie’s fear of circumcision is the reason why he refuses conceding to moral convention and his emphasis on conceptual opposition of secular standard. If the moral convention prefers sense, then he chooses sensuality. If the morals emphasize good, moralistic, convention, and benevolent, then he praises evil, rude, deviation, and violent. A fear of growing old urges him to prove his autonomy and therefore intensifies his out-of-. 政治大. time opinions, poisoning his original political and ideological authority.. 立. Coetzee’s scholars have focused on the absence of Melanie’s account and Lurie’s. ‧ 國. 學. irresponsibility of dealing the aftermath. However, few notice the significance of his. ‧. full acceptance of Melanie’s allegations. He does not wish to read Melanie’s statement, but acknowledge whatever she indicts him for in it. Why? What is in that. y. Nat. er. io. sit. attitude of alienation? Is it because he is disdainful to the allegations? I don’t think so. If he revise some of the parts in the complaint, inevitably, such act will be interpreted. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. as defending himself. Today he chooses not to read it, what he is really saying is that. engchi. he does not care about what other people think. He does not care about other people’s thoughts. But if he does not care about other people’s thoughts, why does he care so much about his incompetence in changing other people’s thoughts? Since he finds out that no matter which path he has taken, his reputation will be ruined, he decides to take an even higher (in his own sense), a more arrogant ground. I think it is an interesting attitude worthy of discussion. And he refuses to state his position as the committee ask him. Therefore, in the end he leaves the university as a declaration of not admitting anything---what he has done before and how other people judge him. 20. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(33) He is indeed a very arrogant person. He does not want to revise anything in Melanie’s allegation because he does not want to make it like explaining himself. The only thing he cares is his reputation, his absolute dignity. There is a contradiction in his attitudes before and after he leaves the school because of the factor of time. Like all the other Greek tragedy, the tragic flaw of the protagonist is his vanity. As an English professor, Lurie is aware of his “self-righteousness” and “wrong spirit” (47) while dealing with the public. When the allegation came out and he is asked to attend the public inquiry, he behaves overly spiritual. Lurie argues that other people misinterpret himself and his intention, but what is. 政治大. the purpose of reading him correctly? For what reasons? In my opinion, those who. 立. regard spiritual life most important and perhaps got a philosophical mysophobia as. ‧ 國. 學. well will inevitably like good-looking people. In other words, people who pursue. ‧. inner beauty also have higher standards for physical beauty, because they just fond of beauties and will seek them in everywhere, in every kind of form. A lover of beauty:. y. Nat. io. sit. this is a key word to understand Lurie and its pertinence to his vanity and his. n. al. er. identification. This can explains Lurie’s mysterious fascination for Melanie Isaacs,. Ch. i Un. v. even though she does not display any academic excellance or any talent and taste in. engchi. art, and his irrational abhorrence for Bev, the unattractive one, and her work. So on what grounds does Lurie criticizes the judegment of others and the allegations of rape? I want to contend that Lurie is criticsizing others according to his moral standards. What’s more, the target he is aiming at is the aesthetic defects in moral convention in which he finds no erotic pleasure and beauty. To put it differently, rather than saying that Lurie wants to preserve his innocence, I would say he is defending his aesthetics, which proceeds to defend for his identity. His aesthetics precedes his sense of guilt and serves as a means of consolidations of the protagonist’s sense of 21. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(34) self. In the novel, Coetzee describes the component members of committee and emphasizes that “the body here gathered has no powers. All it can do is to make recommendations. Furthermore, you have the right to challenge its makeup” (47). The chairman assures Lurie that “it is not a trial but an inquiry. Our rules of procedure are not those of a law court” (48). The committee has no judicial power because it is operated under the administrative law of the university. However, since it is merely supported by administrative law, it magnifies Lurie’s vanity. There will not be a crime record. His arrogance can support him all the way through these charges. If he were. 政治大. put in trial by the country, perhaps he would have taken the responsibility of. 立. defending himself in front of the court more seriously. By then, self-defense should. ‧ 國. 學. not be a free choice but an obligation of all citizens. Lurie says “I am sure the. ‧. members of this committee have better things to do with their time than rehash a story over which there will be no dispute, I plead guilty to both charges” (48). He admits. y. Nat. io. sit. the two charges because the price seems affordable for him now. Instead of. n. al. er. responding to the story of Other, he weaves luxuriously his own story. Lurie’s. Ch. i Un. v. perception of individualism is to set his reputation as priority of all dealings. Even. engchi. though the protagonist volunteerily abandons his position, his privilege, and gives up taking procedure to protect himself, he does not actually “do something” to compensate for the dramatic change of the victim’s life. In this sense, a moral misgiving is displayed: the reinforcement to the singular delineation of the story and the result that is based on the assumption of the traumatic experience of Melanie. Besides the reason for him to accept the crime but not the fault, there is one reason he cannot yield. If he acknowledges his own fault, it might turns out that he cannot forgive himself. In other words, he cannot make himself accept it. Admitting his own 22. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(35) fault is extremely difficult for an arrogant person, or for any person. Conversely, it is because Lurie is unable to compromise himself to society or condescend himself to give an explanation that proves his arrogance. Lurie acknowledges all the allegations addressed by others, however, he refuses to acknowledge his guilt. His stance is empowered by his superior position as well as the utilitarianism of judicial system. Due to his romantic and narcissistic way of selfrationalization, Lurie presents the empowered status of subjectivity of self-defense rhetoric to narcisscism and the obsessive dream of sexual criminal (rapist). In the beginning, he does not wish to challenge moral convention that he tells Melanie. 政治大. “don’t make the situation more complicated than it need be” (35). The responsibilities. 立. (35) demanded by Lurie is to him, but not to herself. To be more precisely, the object. ‧ 國. 學. of resonsibilities is the position of professor and the law system. Therefore, it is hard. ‧. to regard the matter as his exploitation of the girl because the apparatus is the one who is exploiting. He tries to keep the affair within boundries just as Soraya does before.. y. Nat. er. io. sit. Staying in a superior position, he exercises his power to conceal his misdeeds as he tells Melanie to take the test and falsify her attendance and grade. Yet for the public,. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. both the attendance and the grade cannot prove that they truly have affair, or that. engchi. Lurie does rape Melanie. It merely manifest the circumstance that Lurie is fully awared of his position. On the other hand, it does not attest that Lurie has transgressed any moral convention simply because he falsifies her grade. Therefore, Coetzee questions the role the law plays in terms of maintaining justice and morality. The law proves that the professor abuse his power, but does not prove him a rapist. What is happening is given the name as “disgraceful relationship and adultery” or “abusing power illegally and sexual harrassment,” yet either case does literally tackle on the traumatic experience and the moral dysfunctional aspect caused by rape. What kind of 23. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(36) dysfunctional effect does rape cause to an individual? In the novel, the discourse of the traumatic mentality is highlighted and embodied by Lucy, whose aphasia and silence appears as a quiet resistace to the “humanitarian,” effective, and “humanized” discourse of society. The dehumanized calamity is neutralized and naturalized through the humanized discourse of social convention as well as Lurie’s own narcissistic discourse. The crime does not bring light to the raw emotions of victimized personas or restore the crime spot, instead, it exposes the narcissistic rationalization of the rapists. The substance of violence is replaced by the concept of Eros in Lurie’s case. By. 政治大. violence, I mean a great deal of energy that is forced upon another individual through. 立. any irrational means, resulting in the dysfunctions of human relationships. However,. ‧ 國. 學. the act of violence and its energy is hard to find its symbolic meaning due to its. ‧. destructive essence. If violence plays a dominant role in the cultural map in the novel and brings the scenario change of the farm, what kind of symbolism does it present in. y. Nat. io. sit. the psychological structure of the traumatized protagonist? In the vein of social. n. al. er. justice, neither Lurie nor the three black men intend to make “real” transgression to. Ch. i Un. v. moral convention and social form. While infringing the boundaries, Lurie is still able. engchi. to keep his position, a priviledge whereby he fuels his vanity and narcissictic identity. By incorporating the force of otherness, Lurie indulges in another form of adventure without really set himself on exile from the society he lives. The dramatization of the exploitation is a testimony to the indulgence of personal power. Manifested by the three black rapists, the law violators believes they are on the top of power relations. They are the law “executors”. According to Lucy, “But isn't there another way of looking at it, David? What if…what if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that is how I should look at it too. They 24. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(37) see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying? Perhaps that is what they tell themselves” (158). In other words, the rapists break the norm of non-violation based on a cognition that the society will always be on their side: they are of higher human species, or at least, they are killing people for good reasons. They transcend normal people through violating the rule and not being fully punished. Rapists will not be excluded from the society, the woman will. Rape as a Means of Fierce Transformation The accident marks the dysfunction of previous serene pastoral life and creates a. 政治大. tremendous reformation of the living state. In the novel, Coetzee indicates that. 立. personal brutality is led by the cosmos---the force of the collective unconscious that. ‧ 國. 學. urges for fierce change. The sexual violators aim to force a change to the appearance. ‧. of society and the form of life. At least, it is clearly operated in the pastoral culture of Lucy’s circumstance: sexual crime is not a big deal. What the rapists expect is the. y. Nat. er. io. sit. right of outrageous desires allowed by society, that is, they are waiting for recognition. The privilege to sexual violation brings pure self-satisfaction to the level. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. of social appeal. In the novel, the phenomenon is presented by Petrus’ family, which is. engchi. the integration of the pervert, rapist, and polygyny. Family is whereby rapists obtain their shelter, escaping from the punishment of the country. Fully aware of such irrational power of the community, Lucy sacrifices her individuality in order to go with the flow. Since the interrogation of the university involves the question of justice, the conflict between Lurie’s romantic reasoning of defense and the moral judgments of others highlights a narcissistic mentality of the rapist that is nourished by the utilitarian society. On the face of it, his refusal to the mundane penalty is a challenge 25. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(38) to the effectiveness of Althusserian apparatus, but at core those remedial measures become the excuses for sexualists, preventing people to get beneath their real intentions. The lawyer offers several undertaking for him including “a spell of leave,” “sensitivity training,” “community service,” and “counseling” (42), making effort to “minimize the damage” and “make them drop the charge” (42). Those arrangements suggested by his lawyer reveals the core of the judicial procedure is thoroughly influenced by utilitarianism. No matter how one violates the law, the apparatus incorporates the violator through demanding him of “community service” and “counseling.” Ironically, the law assures that the development of society is protected. 政治大. to a maximum degree and the maximum development of human potential is. 立. guaranteed by the moral ban.. ‧ 國. 學. From the secular perspective, it seems that Lurie does not want to bear his own. ‧. disgrace since he refuses to subscribe to a “repentant statement” (57) and these arrangements. Regarding himself as a “disgraced disciple” of William Wordsworth. y. Nat. er. io. sit. (46), Lurie aims to perform the natural flow of desire. His statement points to the struggle of conscience between a rational life and an imaginative play. Through the. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. protagonist’s perspective, Coetzee raises the moral question of whether conscience is. engchi. the real concern in the law court. Apparently, there is the castration to the sovereign power of the mundane court, which is supposed to stand for moral convention, morality, goodness, and justice. The novel exposes the complicated facets of morality based on various subject’s position. Lurie’s sexual adventures and his disrespect to social boundaries reveal his rejection to social responsibility such as domestic responsibility, social confinement, the normal expectation of masculinity, and lopsided interpretation of his deeds. However, do not the limits of moral regulations paradoxically reveal the configuration of humanity, wrapping up the excluded dark 26. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(39) emotions through making explicit what is amenable? In this sense, in defiance of the rational norms, Lurie is redefining the boundaries between the irrational and the rational, reality and illusion. The Desire for Transcendental Feeling As a herald of traditional romantic humanism, professor Lurie alludes to Byron’s “erring spirit from another hurled,” “a thing of dark imaginings” (32) to endorse his erotic desire as fundamentally poetic. However, Disgrace suggests that desire vanishes instead of sublimates when one attempts to fulfill it. The complexity of poetic desire is described in Wordsworth’s The Prelude, the poet in the Alps:. 政治大. we also first beheld. 立. Unveilded the summit of Mont Blanc, and grieved. ‧ 國. 學. To have a soulless image on the eye. ‧. That had usurped upon a living thought That never more could be. (21). y. Nat. er. io. sit. Desire is more like a “living thought,” an “imagination” instead of an impetus. Desire points to a direction that slightly variates through the intricate path of imagination.. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. Therefore, it remains estranged and aliented. The fulfillment of desire does not bring. engchi. to a satisfying result but disillusion. The mountain is not the destination, nor is it the object of desire. Instead, its plays as merely the progress. For a traveller who has been longing for it, it turns out that he grieves to see it. The coming of the view of mountain peak does not bring to a “flash of revelation” (21). Therefore, Lurie is struggling in giving his students a learning, a meaning. “Without a flash of revelation there is nothing” (21). The contradiction is that the traveller grasps a sense of nothingness. Nothingness, “soulless image” (21) is the “fruit” he gets at last. So perhaps revelation does not takes the manifestations of some edenic fantasy of 27. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(40) wholeness. For Lurie, pure idea is one of the manifestation of his own desires and imagination. Desire, in his own words, manifested to himself as an “archetypal, goddesslike form” (22) only lives in the beautiful state of womb. The meaning of usurp is more like tearing apart such innocent delusion when the traveller encounters reality. Perhaps the “wanderlust” which is part of the desire of the traveller is where the revelation is. Lurie, or Coetzee, askes “how can we keep the imagination pure, protected from the onslaught of reality?” (22) Coetzee makes pure imagination quintessentially feminine and the onslaught of reality corresponding to the act of rape. Rape, is not merely physical usurption, but also usurption in terms of intellect.. 政治大. The visual image usurps the imagination and inevitably murders the “living thought”. 立. of the traveller. That living thought is generated from a desire, the ineffable of the. ‧ 國. 學. unconcious. To be born is to lose all that. However, the poem gets intricate. ‧. interpretations from Lurie. Although the imagination of desire cannot be fulfilled, the sense-perception of the traveller reveals his own unconscious. In the following. y. Nat. io. sit. passage, Lurie explains that “Wordsworth seems to be feeling his way toward a. n. al. er. balance”: “Wordsworth is writing about the limits of sense-perception…As the sense-. Ch. i Un. v. organs reach the limit of their powers, their light begins to go out. Yet at the moment. engchi. of expiry, that light leaps up one last time like a candle-flame, giving us a glimpse of the invisible.” (22) The invisible means the unconscious, the ineffable, and the darkness. Lurie refers to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in this passage. Orpheus is told not to turn back until he reach the ground so that he can bring his wife Eurydice back from the underworld. But he fails such extremely easy task. It seems that Orpheus done such thing with all intentionality. Lurie makes a self-reflexive interpretation of Wordsworth’s Alps as being in love. Orpheus tries to prove his love for Eurydice through descending to the Underworld. However, his significant failure 28. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(41) at last attests that he, or to be more precisely, his love, is unable to withstand the ordeals. The touching musics he played in front of Hades and the words he uses to moves Hades are merely flattery that cannot withstand tests. Orpheus proves as a great artist his musics could moves Hades, and that he can bring the dead back to life. The memories of Eurydice is the soil of his inspirations and his artworks. But he does not really wish Eurydice to come back. What Orpheus’s venture to the underworld does reveals is the artist’s desire to pursuit art. Orpheus’s turn shows his hesitation and his confession. He is giving up such privilidge because this is not what he wants. His love and his desires are left behind, left in the past, because they should stay in. 政治大. darkness. In Disgrace, the parallel between Orpheus and Lurie is that Melanie and. 立. Eurydice are just means for them to fulfill their desire to manifest the existence of the. ‧ 國. 學. Other.. ‧. The Moral is an Artistic Experience. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Eros, in the Freudian terms, means. y. Nat. er. io. sit. the urge towards self-preservation and sexual pleasure. If one is able to find ways to fulfill his sexual pleasure, he is more likely to develop his self-validation. However,. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. there is a sense of disgrace in his sexual urges. In a conversation between him and. engchi. Lucy, he speaks about a dog get beaten by its owner whenever it gets excited as a bitch passing by as metaphor: “There was something so ignoble in the spectacle that I despaired. One can punish a dog, it seems to me, for an offense like chewing a slipper. A dog will accept the justice of that: a beating for a chewing. But desire is another story. No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts. “ “So males must be allowed to follow their instincts unchecked? Is that the 29. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(42) moral?” “No, that is not the moral. What was ignoble about the Kenilworth spectacle was that the poor dog had begun to hate its own nature. It no longer needed to be beaten. It was ready to punish itself. At that point it would have been better to shoot it.” “Or to have it fixed.” “Perhaps. But at the deepest level I think it might have preferred being shot. It might have preferred that to the options it was offered: on the one hand, to deny its nature, on the other, to spend the rest of its days padding about the. 政治大. living-room, sighing and sniffing the cat and getting portly.” (90). 立. Having reciprocal empathy with the animal, his desires triggers a sort of traumatic. ‧ 國. 學. experience that reminds him of his incompleteness, which gives him a sense of. ‧. disgrace. To follow instincts in no moral, while to forbid instinct is ignoble. Accordingly, the pride to fulfill desire is eliminated as soon as the subject chooses to. y. Nat. er. io. sit. execute it, in a situation where the issue of self-preservation is considered. Then, again, accordingly, in a circumscribed situation, moral feeling only arouses when our. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. desires clash with the outside moral standard. However, I think that proves the feeling. engchi. of disgrace is, in fact, a feeling of moral. To live a moral life, people cannot get rid of encountering a disgraceful kind of emotions while they are meant to traverse, encompass the gap of rational idealism and desire. To deduct the logic to its extreme, a degraded and imprisoning life is conditional, necessary and inevitable if anyone attempts to live an authentic and honest life. Morality, or the feeling of moral, does not come from a rational deed, but an artistic experience in one’s own heart, that which his spiritual life must be taken into consideration as an imperative condition. Otherwise, without prescribing conditions correctly, the discussion of morality is 30. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.

(43) impossible and always out of reach. Likewise, the judgment of a moral court is of no value since the erotic foundation for reference is selected out. Transformative Stages of Eros If the moral is an artistic feeling, as I argue above, then Disgrace also marks the distinction between moral conventions and inner conscience. The clash of rational norms and natural desire brings to certain transformative stages in the development of the protagonist’s Eros. His initial belief of Eros is based on instincts in terms of conventional humanism. The disappearance of Soraya uncovers the locus of desire. Eros manifests itself as an outrageous power toward the disappointment of illusion,. 政治大. and a ruthlessness generated from the sterility of life, instead of just what he considers. 立. as “a god acted through him” (89). Moreover, such Romanticism, or romantic. ‧ 國. 學. humanism, is eroded by the moral court, which is represented by the allegory of the. ‧. dog in his neighborhood. Instead of saying Coetzee provides an intellectual challenge to the right of desire, I would say he is tackling on the romantic sublimation that used. y. Nat. er. io. sit. to be thought to be contained in the idea of Eros. Eros, embodying a great variety, is not an experience of sublime, but an experience of castration. It is an urge,. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. characterized by individualistic erotic experiences, that aims to fulfill the emptiness of. engchi. desire but will inevitably get castrated by rational norms. Like the dog in Lurie’s statement, whenever a person attempts to reach the sexual climax, he immediately kills his desire before it is ever completed. In the social regime, extremely individualistic fulfillment is never allowed, yet, paradoxically, humans within the milieu are forever encouraged to pursue groundbreaking achievement. After being informed of Lucy’s pregnancy, Lurie discovers another complexity of Eros that subverts his previous emotional experience. Eros is not just about “sex,” but an improper contact of energies at the core. There is something inhuman about the Eros 31. DOI:10.6814/NCCU201900778.