來自死亡：柯慈小說《鐵器時代》中的禮物、責任、與悅納異己

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩. 士. 論. 文. Master Thesis Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University. 來自死亡: 柯慈小說《鐵器時代》中的禮物、責任、與悅納異己. The Ethics Derived from Death: Gift, Responsibility, and Hospitality in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron. 指導教授: 梁孫傑 Advisor: Dr. Sun-chieh Liang 研究生: 張宇欣 Graduate: Yu-hsin Chang. 中華. 民國. 一百. 零一年六月. June, 2012.

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(3) 摘要援引法國理論家德希達關於禮物、責任的哲思，本論文之宗旨乃試圖探究南非諾貝爾文學獎得主柯慈(J. M. Coetzee)小說《鐵器時代》中死亡觀念對主體所造成之影響與其所蘊含的倫理意涵。受到德希達一貫理論脈絡中隱含的給予、接受與回應等主題的影響，本論文分就三個與死亡相互關聯的主題進行分析: 「死亡」、「責任」和「悅納異己」。柯慈的《鐵器時代》一書可被視為一份柯倫太太準備給遙遠女兒的禮物，而其禮物的呈現方式為一份必須在柯倫太太死亡後才能被寄出的信件。首先，本文著眼於論述柯倫太太寫給女兒的信件為一真正純粹的禮物。其給予的條件不僅是不能被回報、必須打破禮物的經濟，更是必須以犧牲自我為前提所贈與的一純粹禮物。其次，本文的第二章節著眼於柯倫太太受限於南非殖民歷史文化的固有觀念。柯倫太太被種族隔離歷史文化形塑的觀念迫使她不加思索的行使有條件的待客之道(conditional hospitality)。柯倫太太佔有文化中「主人」的地位，時時刻刻規範排斥著南非黑人的觀念與立場。然此受制於歷史文化的觀念卻是柯倫太太持續想要擺脫的。本文最後的主題探討柯倫太太受到死亡的影響而做出的改變。柯倫太太從死亡中了解其生命的不可替代性 (irreplaceability)，並進而了解何為責任的重要性。柯倫太太除此更進一步去愛原本她所不能愛的「客人」，包括叛逆的少年與遊蕩街頭的流浪漢，達到了無條件的悅納異己(unconditional hospitality)。因為死亡的影響，柯倫太太最終離開在文化中「主人」的位置，並得以從自我鞏固的狀態變為慷慨給予。透過德希達的理論，讀者終能了解在《鐵器時代》一書中死亡形塑生命倫理價值的力量。. 關鍵詞: 柯慈，《鐵器時代》，死亡，禮物，犧牲，責任，悅納異己，主人與客人，南非. -i-.

(4) Abstract This thesis aims to explore the theme of death and its intricate relation to the ethical implications of gift and responsibility in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron (1990). Inspired by Jacques Derrida’s theoretical discussion on the notions of circulation and the responding relationship between the subject and the other, the thesis comprises three correlated themes of gift, responsibility, and hospitality. Treated as a gift to the daughter who has left South Africa, the letter is written by a dying mother, Mrs. Curren, who however insists the gift be sent after her death. The first thematic concern on the letter argues that the letter appears itself as a pure gift which does not ask for any reciprocal payback. Revealing itself as anti-economy, the posthumous letter is a gift given at the price of Mrs.Curren’s sacrifice for her daughter. The second part of this thematic project suggests that the knowledge and values resulting from the colonial history possess Mrs. Curren’s mind and lead to Mrs. Curren’s limit to the conditional hospitality. Occupying the position of the host in the historical consciousness, she is only able to respond to what is lying outside the principles of the apartheid system by standing within the system. The theme of the third chapter focuses on the inseparability of responsibility and unconditional hospitality. With the realization of singularity generated by the eventual annihilation, Mrs. Curren goes through the transformation from self-fortification to selfless generosity. Mrs. Curren is saved eventually. In sum, a Derridean reading of Age of Iron reveals death as a necessity in the formation of life.. Keywords: J. M. Coetzee, Age of Iron, death, gift, sacrifice, responsibility, hospitality, host and guest, South Africa. -ii-.

(5) Acknowledgement There are many people who support me during the difficult moments of my writing process. Therefore, at the very last stage of my writing, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to these people. The completion of this thesis would have been impossible without them. Firstly, I am greatly indebted to my supervisor, Prof. Sun-chieh Liang, for his instruction and suggestion during my writing process. I sincerely thank his patience and tolerance in leading me to discover my academic interest in the field of ethics, and I am very grateful for his careful reading whenever I finish a part of the thesis. In my personal life, I truly thank his valuable words which make me more mature; the words will be always remembered. I would also like to thank the two committee members in my final defense, Prof. Frank Stevenson and Prof. Han-yu Huang. Their advice will be invaluable in my future research on Age of Iron. In addition, many of my friends also kindly offer me support in this period: Bartleby Hsu, Josh Yang, Chris Wang, Kabi Chang, and Abby Hsu. I appreciate their friendship and timely help whenever I am in need of them. For Rachel Wu and Vita Chang, whose accompanies and encouragement give me unfailing strength and hope to move on finishing my writing, I thank these two greatly. In particular, I want to express my gratitude to Literature Huang, who is my dearest friend and who has always been my very first reader. His kindly support, spiritually and academically, plays a very essential part in the difficult writing process. For my beloved family, my parents and my sister, I owe a great deal to them. I want to express my deepest gratitude for their selfless love and their care for my dog during my absence in Tainan. Their kindly and persistent support has always played the most important part in my life. This thesis is the dedication for them; nothing does it give but my love. -iii-.

(6) Table of Contents Chinese Abstract…………………………………………………………………... ...i. English Abstract………………………………………………………………………ii. Acknowledgement………………………………………………………………… ...iii. Introduction…………………………………………………………………..………..1. Chapter One: The Letters Sent After Death: A Genuine Gift…………..…………….14. Chapter Two: To Think Conditionally: Host and Conditional Hospitality…………..34. Chapter Three: The Simultaneity of Responsibility and Unconditonal Hospitality.....60. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………92. Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………..97. -v-.

(7) Introduction. Having received various prestigious awards such as the Jerusalem Prize (1987), and the Noble Prize (2003), J. M. Coetzee is one of the most important authors who emerge from South Africa in the late 20th century. Coetzee’s novels usually stage the statement of the opposition to the system of apartheid, but unlike the other South African authors who are direct and straightforward in their writings to point out the contemporary problems in South Africa, Coetzee seems to maintain a relatively ambiguous status in his writings, at least on the surface of his writings, not to be about the contemporary situation in South Africa. In his novels, there is a universal struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor, and such political chaos he depicts can happen in any other countries, at any points in the history. We can only precisely recognize his depiction of the persecution under the apartheid era “when considering a South African author writing about the victimization in South Africa” (Post 67). Upheld as J. M. Coetzee’s “most realistic novel of the apartheid era” (Head 2006: 102), Age of Iron is Coetzee’s sixth novel written in the form of a letter in which the dying narrator, Elizabeth Curren, writes to her daughter who leaves South Africa for the U.S.. Asking Mr. Vercueil – the uninvited derelict whom Mrs. Curren finds gradually reliable – to mail the letter for her, Mrs. Curren insists that the letter should be sent to her daughter only after her death. Composed of a series of dialogues and descriptions, the letter manifests Mrs. Curren’s struggle to “tell the truth” (Coetzee 1990:162).1 Apparently, in Age of Iron Coetzee adopts and develops the mode of confession to investigate the effects of apartheid history by letting the dying 1. From now on, quotes from Age of Iron will frequently show up in my thesis. For the reason of. convenience and clearness, any quotation provided without referring to the book or the author(s) comes directly from Age of Iron. -1-.

(8) Mrs. Curren reflect on what she has been through in the late apartheid era. Mrs. Curren rethinks her ethical/political views toward the situation of South Africa in the late 1980s’, yet her voice to illustrate her ethical/political views are constantly challenged and contested by Mr. Vercueil and the revolutionaries, which make us wonder and ask: even though she is situated in the state of near-death, is Mrs. Curren able to explore the truthfulness? In confrontation with her death, does Mrs. Curren start to convert her attitude to a state in which we find ethical values? For Coetzee, it seems it is beyond his capability to control the readers to look for ethical meanings within the text. During the interview with David Attwell, Coetzee gave very little elaboration on Age of Iron, the book which was yet to be published. Coetzee acknowledged that he was not able to provide any significant reflection upon his latest novel, since he had been “too near its writing – too near and too raw – to know what to think of it” (Coetzee& Attwell 250). When asked during the interview whether Mrs. Curren reaches the absolution eventually, Coetzee explained that the importance of the novel lay in “the phrasing [words and sentences which have been heard, written]” (Coetzee& Attwell 250), yet when speaking of if there is any ethical essence behind Mrs. Curren’s narrative, Coetzee replied: “There is no ethical imperative that I claim access to …. As for me, the book is written, it will be published, nothing can stop it. The deed is done, what power was available to me is exercised” (Coetzee& Attwell 250). Based on what Coetzee claimed in his interview, what is staged in the narration of Age of Iron is what must be voiced/written through Mrs. Curren’s narrative, but it has little relevance to the ethical codes. However, from Coetzee’s acknowledgement of his being too close to know what to say about his latest novel, the piece of interview lures its readers to ask: is the author so certain that what is hidden behind the novel is of no ethical imperative? -2-.

(9) Coetzee’s words in response to Attwell implicitly manifest that even being the person who writes the novel, Coetzee does not have the authority to interfere with the judgments of the readers, nor can he stop phrases and words from conveying the meaning to its readers.2 Therefore, although he claimed he had no intention to reveal any ethical imperative in the novel, critics never stopped disclosing the possibility of ethical imperatives from Age of Iron, despite Coetzee’s candid acknowledgement during the interview with Attwell.3 Among the critics, how the role of death and gift is intertwined with ethics in Age of Iron is mostly discussed. In “A True Confession: ‘Age of Iron’,” Dominic Head provides his point of view that an unconventional gift is offered by Mr. Vercueil to Mrs. Curren, in that Mrs. Curren’s true confession and eventual “redemption” is based upon Mr. Vercueil’s unreliability as a messenger and his uselessness as a confessor (Head 130). Mr. Vercueil’s enigmatic role makes the delivery of the letter uncertain, and his lack of attention and responding while he listens to Mrs. Curren obscures his position as a confessor (130). But all these undefineable traits Mr. Vercueil embodies come to reinforce the truth and self-knowledge Mrs. Curren realizes in her letter. Talking to an absent daughter and an inattentive listener, Mrs. Curren is not confessing to anyone but herself alone. She must endure the discomfort resulted from the confessor’s absent-mindedness when she talks to him. In other words, Mrs. Curren confesses 2. When we take into consideration the connection between Coetzee, Age of Iron, and the readers, it is. our reference to Roland Barthes’ theory that makes Coetzee’s referring to Age of Iron peculiar and meaningful. My point is that the biological author may not be the origin of the text, the only source of the authority for interpretation (See Roland Barthes’ Death of The Author). Instead, as Roland Barthes argues, a literary work is open to all its readers. Roland Barthes in his latter works emphasizes that the source of the meaning is presided by “the site of [tenuous] details” in the text (Sade 8). An “Author” therefore is raised out of a series of details in its text, while the biological author of the text is allowed to be disregarded. 3. When referring to the narratives of Mrs. Curren, Coetzee said “There is no ethical imperative that I. claim access to”. -3-.

(10) without being heard, and this situation is not possible to elicit any double thoughts in her, but eventually makes her confession a true one (Head 132).4 By making a confession without self-interest, Mrs. Curren achieves her timely redemption before her dying; this is the gift provided by Mr. Vercueil. Other critics have discussed the conception of gift in an analogous way. The theme of gift is associated with both the relationship between Mrs. Curren and Mr. Vercueil and the relationship between Mrs. Curren and her daughter. Derek Attridge, in “Trusting the Other: Age of Iron,” casts the focus of gift-giving to the letter Mrs.Curren writes to her daughter. According to Attridge’s opinion, writing a letter to her daughter is a matter of bequeathing her daughter her unusual experiences and understanding as she approaches death, including the recounting of the specific historical situation in South Africa and the difficult rectification of “values and habits built upon over a lifetime” (Attridge 92). Being sent away posthumously, the gift shown in the form of letter transmits Mrs. Curren’s love and understanding to her daughter, and without the thought of return, the letter enables Mrs. Curren’s giving a fullness of giving (Attridge 93). As Attridge points out, insisting the one way mother-daughter love and inheritance, Mrs. Curren desires to give, by which she can also project her existence to the future (106-107). Hence, heavily loaded with Mrs. Curren’s unilateral love to her daughter, the long letter is perceived as a true gift from a mother to a daughter. However, Attridge’s belief of what makes a true gift is questioned by Poyner who holds the 4. Confession as a literary mode is extensively discussed in Coetzee’s essay, “Confession and Double. Thoughts: Tolstoy, Rousseau, Dostoevsky.” Confession should be used to “tell the truth to and for oneself” (Coetzee 1992: 291), but Coetzee considers that confession occurs to be going against the grain. In the essay, Coetzee concerns with the problem whether a true confession is possible without the disturbance of self-deception and the motivation of deception. Mixed with the motivation of deception, self-interest, and self-congratulation, a confession cannot come to meet its goal of confronting the darkest side of the confessant. The truth of the confession becomes invalid under the influences of these motivation, and thus “the pattern of double thoughts” is encouraged (Head 183). -4-.

(11) opposite viewpoint on the validity of Mrs. Curren’s pure gift. Informed by Kantian theory which argues that an act is only morally appropriate if it stems from a sense of duty rather than ulterior motives, Poyner argues that the letter is tainted by Mrs. Curren’s intention when she projects her existence through it (Poyner 118). In “Writing in the Face of Death: ‘False Etymologies’ and ‘Home Truths’ in Age of Iron,” Poyner at first agrees there is “a profound sense of the ethical” in Mrs. Curren’s narrative (116). According to Poyner, Mrs. Curren interweaves herself with the ethics and politics through her engagement with love and trust in her narratives (Poyner 118). However, though thinking the narrative to be filled with the sense of ethics, Poyner points out the letter is not “a fuller expression of love” to her daughter (117). The letter is indeed an inheritance given to her daughter, since Mrs. Curren writes: “They are my daughter’s inheritance. They are all I can give her, all she will accept, coming from this country” (31-32). Yet Poyner glimpses a sense of self-interest lurking beneath the surface of the letter, in that “it [her writing] is a means of venting her anguish about her lost daughter and her illness” (Poyner 118). Facing the impending death without her daughter’s accompany, Mrs. Curren puts her daughter under the burden of moral obligation by accusing her of abandoning her mother: “Is this an accusation? Yes, J’accuse. I accuse you of abandoning me. I fling this accusation at you...I fling my pain at you” (139-140). Poyner argues that Mrs. Curren’s letter is imbued with furious emotions and resentment. The letter “violates the ethics of gift-giving because, rather than simply conveying mother-love, it is her means of uncovering self-truths” (Poyner 118). Due to the implicitly hidden self-interest, Mrs. Curren writes: “To whom this writing then? The answer: to you but not to you; to me; to you in me” (5). Therefore, “couched in terms of honesty and plain-speaking,” Mrs.. -5-.

(12) Curren’s letter fails to be a wholly true bond between a mother and a daughter (Poyner 119). In addition to the ethics of gift-giving, critics also cast lights on the association of responsibility and otherness. Attridge claims that the question of otherness is the very central issue in Age of Iron, because Mrs. Curren’s response to Mr. Vercueil and the committed revolutionary children can be construed as a responsibility to the otherness. As what Attridge proposes, the other cannot be sought, but to be encountered unexpectedly, embodying the otherness to a specific subject (99). The other, in the Derridean term, is the arrivant to whom we are already obligated and for whom we find ourselves responsible (Attridge 103). The fullest responsibility Mrs. Curren finds in the other in the form of Mr. Vercueil is to trust him, the figure who remains unknowable, and this absolute trust to the other is based on “no rational ground” (Attridge 98). For Behki’s friend, Attridge addresses the fact that even though Mrs. Curren finds difficulties in making any relations across the boundary between white bourgeois and black revolutionary, he, too, is the other to whom Mrs. Curren is responding/responsible. Such a responding to the other, either to Mr. Vercueil or to John, manifests Mrs. Curren’s possibility to love the other “whom she is least inclined to love” (Attridge 177). Attwell points out that the role of the other enables her to speak “from within her consciousness of impending death” (Attridge 174). She is reluctant to see the other as nonhuman, nor does she think the intersubjective recognition can be shared by them (Attridge 170). In his discussion on Mrs. Curren, Attridge assertively attributes Mrs. Curren’s moral advancement to her growing responsibility to the other characters. But the notion of responsibility is undergoing a closer scrutiny under Michael Marais and Mike Marais’s discussion. In “Coming into Being: J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man and the -6-.

(13) Aesthetic of Hospitality,” Michael Marais focuses on the notion of hospitality, arguing that “very little criticism to date has examined Coetzee’s use of the metaphor of hospitality in his writing” (273). According to Michael Marais, Coetzee’s intention to involve hospitality into his writing is evident in his concerns with the arrival of the strangers. Coetzee attempts to parallel Mrs. Curren to Leo Tolstoy’s shoemaker in “What Men Live By,” yet Mrs. Curren’s grudging charity to the unexpected visitors contrasts drastically to the shoemaker’s unselfish generosity. Marais points out that Mrs. Curren’s selfish love is the trope of conditional hospitality. However, although Mrs. Curren’s hospitality might be conditional at first, it transforms into the unconditional eventually. Mrs. Curren’s subsequent narrative reflects a care or love that flows beyond her concern with herself (Michael Marais 274). “Despite her various reservations,” concludes Marais, Mrs. Curren “is in fact deeply affected and therefore changed by her encounter with [Mr. Vercueil]” (274). Among the aforementioned critiques, it is clear the issue of death has been continually discussed from a wide spectrum of critics, though such issue has never really been enthusiastically debated before. From one of the articles proposed by Head, it is the foreseeability of the inevitable death that facilitates Mrs. Curren’s true confession: “The revelation of truth can occur, in the unique moment before death” (Head 138). For Attridge, the awareness and existence of death plays a pivotal role throughout the story. It makes the posthumous letter a fullness of giving, and without it, Mrs. Curren’s relying on Mr. Vercueil cannot be qualified as “trust.” Nonetheless, Poyner later points out that Mrs. Curren can neither make a truthful confession nor send a gift of love under the push of death. Death thus becomes a topic widely discussed in Age of Iron.. -7-.

(14) Overall, Age of Iron can be qualified as a literary work associated with death, gift, otherness, and responsibility. Nonetheless, none of the critics mentioned above provide a complete elaboration on the theme of gift by directly engaging in the theoretical writings of Derrida or Levinas. Thus, readers may find it hard to clearly understand the association between death and the gift’s pure form.5 On the other hand, the issue of the other and responsibility, though intensively elaborated by Attridge and Attwell in their works, is scarcely related to the concept of death. Throughout their works, there is little discussion on death and its influence on responsibility. If Mrs. Curren’s responsibility has nothing to do with her imminent death, how do we explain her sudden change to respond to the other after her long silent complicity to the oppression of black Afrikaans? There must be something that results in her behavior. At the same time, the discussion on responsibility is incomplete without any concern of Derridean hospitality. We cannot ignore the inseparability of responsibility and hospitality, since the pattern of hospitality accounts for the responsibility to the uninvited guest, and it is the uninvited guest that occupies the significant place in Mrs. Curren’s transformation into being responsible. Is Mrs. Curren’s responsibility to the other also a duty to the arrivant? If yes, what kind of attitude/duty should Mrs. Curren take/bear when facing the other/arrivant? These are the questions I will address in my thesis. The purpose of my thesis originates from my belief that there is ethical imperative in Age of Iron. A reader’s desire to liberate the text from the author’s control urges me to look beyond J. M. Coetzee’s comments on Mrs. Curren’s intricate narratives, and it is my disagreement on Jane Poyner’s comments on Mrs. Curren that makes me. 5. In fact, Attridge already touches the fringes of the conception, but due to his focus on the theme of. trust, and otherness/other, he does not continue to work on the Derridean gift in his “Trusting the Other.” -8-.

(15) determined to explore the ethical imperative in the novel. The former says there is no ethical imperative in the novel, while the latter believes Mrs. Curren violates the ethics of gift-giving through her writing to vent her anger at her lost daughter. As Attwell underscores in the introduction to Doubling the Point, what Coetzee persistently strives to do in his novels is always an attempt to “[broach] the possibility of ethical reconstruction” (Coetzee&Attwell 12). It seems Age of Iron is no exception. In this thesis, I intend to argue that it is Mrs. Curren’s death that enables her to achieve the ethics of gift-giving, responsibility, and hospitality. The gift, responsibility, and hospitality that derive from her death can be recognized as the ethical imperative I have been seeking for in the novel. In my opinion, the parcel of letter composed of maternal love from a dying mother represents the manifestation of Mrs. Curren’s mother-love to her daughter: it is a gift given out of a mother’s love, in which there stages the infinite love one gives by sacrificing her life, as well as the responsibility, hospitality that Mrs. Curren bears to the other while facing her own death. From Chapter One to Chapter Three, Jacques Derrida’s theoretical conceptions have been frequently employed as methodology to explain the connection between death, gift, responsibility, and hospitality. On the one hand, Derrida’s perspectives on gift and responsibility are helpful in supporting the argument of this paper, answering the research questions mentioned above. On the other, the construction of Coetzee’s fictions heavily relies upon the “resources of deconstrucitons” (Coetzee& Attwell 246). Coetzee’s fictions are regarded as the allegorization of literary theories in that the plots and the characters can always be viewed as the embodiment of literary theories, particularly Derrida’s deconstruction.6. 6. In Life & Times of Michael K, the protagonist is viewed as a kind of Derridean trace that refuses to. possess any fixed position in system (Coetzee&Attwell 245); in Foe, Friday is considered as a -9-.

(16) Due to his fictions’ close association with Derrida’s literary theories, I will adopt Derrida’s notions in order to demonstrate what Mrs. Curren achieves in confrontation with her death is the ethics of gift-giving, responsibility, and hospitality. In Chapter One, I will primarily focus on Mrs. Curren’s letter. The question I would like to pose in Chapter Two is whether the posthumous letter can be seen as a gift of love sent at the price of death. By relying upon Derrida’s theoretical narrative on gift, Chapter Two intends to reveal the fact that Mrs. Curren’s letter is a gift of love, a pure gift which is only accessible through the giver’s death. My argument in this chapter will rely on three logically-connected conceptions: anti-economy, time, and sacrifice. The letter, first of all as a gift, is not going to be returned in any way, because Mrs. Curren’s letter reveals itself as anti-economy. Such a unique trait of a pure gift is elaborated in Derrida’s Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money. We learn from Given Time that gift-giving is not about “a real gift” at all. Once Mrs. Curren dies, the letter reveals its pure form in that it is not possible for her daughter to return the gift to her mother who has already passed away. This unilateral giving does not ask for a reciprocal payback. Second, if there is anything that can be conveyed through Mrs. Curren’s letter, then it will be something that is beyond Mrs. Curren’s possession. Through the letter Mrs. Curren bequeaths time to her daughter. The daughter is given the time and the future of her life by Mrs. Curren. Also, it is appropriate to view Mrs. Curren’s letter as a gift of death, a gift given at the price of Mrs.Curren’s sacrifice for her daughter. I would like to make Mrs. Curren’s decision parallel with Abraham’s plight in Derrida’s The Gift of Death. While Abraham sacrifices his son to love God, Mrs. Curren, bearing the same love like Abraham,. “guardian of significant silence or absence” (Coetzee&Attwell 245) -10-.

(17) sacrifices herself to love her daughter. Her willingness to remove the chances to see her daughter manifests the “sacrificial nature of gifting” (Tata 49). In Chapter Two, the focus will revolve around how deeply Mrs. Curren is influenced by the colonial history in South Africa. The knowledge and values resulting from the colonial history lead to Mrs. Curren’s limit to her conditional hospitality. In Age of Iron Mrs. Curren is described in a direct way in her interaction with the late apartheid era and her location in the historical or social context in South Africa, simply owing to Mrs. Curren being highly aware of her inseparability with the colonial history in South Africa. Although quite dissatisfied with her deep involvement with the apartheid history, she knows clearly that she is in any way constructed in the system. The debasing influences upon Mrs. Curren are not limited to her perception of the world. The apartheid forces that possess Mrs. Curren’s mind also influence her interaction to the other characters in the novel. Therefore, some adumbration of the colonial history in South Africa will be included in the preceding part of Chapter Three, in which I will particularly introduce the apartheid system in South Africa since 1948. In the latter part in this chapter, Mrs. Curren’s limit of conditional hospitality will be my primary concern. That Mrs. Curren’s apartheid-constructed life is a manifestation of conditional hospitality is established upon two insights. On the one hand, she uses her values which only work out in the system of apartheid, to fortify herself against the danger of exposing herself to the difference and otherness; on the other, she acts like a “host” by imposing rules and duties on whoever comes into her house. While exercising conditional hospitality to her guests, she uses her power to expel whoever challenges her life-long belief. My intention here in Chapter Two is going to be served as a foreshadow by which readers will be able to investigate how -11-.

(18) Mrs. Curren changes in Chapter Three. Significantly, what had been enshrined through her life is forsaken eventually, since she becomes able to offer selfless love, which in this thesis will be elaborated by the adoption of Derridean responsibility and hospitality. In Chapter Three, I wish to make clear the inseparability of responsibility and unconditional hospitality in Age of Iron. While the former occurs in her private sphere and the latter the realm of politics, they are both duties, and the simultaneity of the two things is presented by Mrs. Curren’s selfless generosity to Mr. Verrcueil and the young revolutionaries. Therefore, the focus in this chapter will mainly lie on the notion of Derridean responsibility and unconditional hospitality. I intend to argue that Mrs. Curren’s responsibility for other black South Africans derives from her death. To understand what responsibility is, we should not confine our apprehension merely in the realm of social guidance and scientific knowledge: according to Derrida, responsibility comes from wherein our death lies. In the state of near death, Mrs. Curren’s attitude alters in accordance with the experiences revolving around her death. Mrs. Curren takes up her responsibility to those whom she disregarded before when she learns of the advent of her death. Following my elaboration on Mrs. Curren’s responsibility to the others, I intend to proceed further to argue that to be responsible to, or to love, the unlovable, is to provide unconditional hospitality to them. Mrs. Curren eventually refuses to occupy the position as a host in terms of culture and history before her death. A will to love those to whom she never wanted to give her love derives from her heart. She eventually reaches the level of unconditional hospitality, because her trust to Mr. Vercueil and her responsibility to John and Bheki seem to suggest the dispossession of self. In terms of unconditional hospitality, Mrs. Curren becomes the hostage of her -12-.

(19) guests and their value systems, because they thrust their values into Mrs. Curren’s world without Mrs. Curren’s permission. Mrs. Curren is not able to fortify herself as she used to be. However difficult it is, her change makes her reach unconditional hospitality. Mrs. Curren is saved before her death.. -13-.

(20) Chapter One: The Letters Sent After Death: A Genuine Gift. They are my daughter’s inheritance. They are all I can give her, all she will accept. ----J. M. Coetzee Age of Iron For there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt. ----Jacques Derrida Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money. Reading Age of Iron is a matter of reading strange papers written by a dying woman who strives to tell her daughter “truth and love together” (129). Through the process of writing, Mrs. Curren tries to make her truth heard. She wants to tell her daughter of the waning yet the cruelest time of apartheid, of how Bheki is killed, and of how she has lived. As she approaches death, telling the truth is “a matter of bequeathing [her daughter] what she has learned” (Attridge 91). In addition to truth, the papers are also fully imbued with love. Mrs. Curren’s papers serve as a medium to communicate to her daughter, and above all, to communicate her love to her daughter. She believes the papers she has written are able to illustrate her intensification of love as well as draw her daughter closer to her. As she describes, the papers she writes are “fashioned and packed with love” (9). The communication to the daughter is important for Mrs. Curren. However, the longing for the communication of love is carried out in the most indirect and improbable way. Mrs. Curren can reach her daughter either by giving her daughter a phone call or by visiting her daughter in person. Mrs. Curren has the opportunity to -14-.

(21) leave for America to meet her daughter but she turned it down: “Should I have come when you invited me? In my weaker moments I have often longed to cast myself on your mercy. How lucky, for both our sakes, that I have held out” (127). But at last, the medium she chooses to convey her love is through a parcel of papers. What’s more, according to Mrs. Curren’s own will, this letter will only be mailed after Mrs. Curren’s own death. Why does Mrs. Curren make the decision which renders the communication impossible? Why does she insist that the letter be sent after her death? Mrs. Curren once mentions that all she can leave to her daughter is the letter in which she packs her love. To Mrs. Curren, the long letter serves as a gift she leaves to her daughter. But why is it not sent only after Mrs. Curren’s death? Why is Mrs. Curren’s love expressed after the donor’s death, in such a indirect way? All the questions mentioned above can be summarized into a quest in search of the interrelated relationship of death and the gift. To provide applicable explanations to Mrs. Curren’s insistence to mail her letter after death, I intend to set out my first chapter to explore and explicate the intricate relationship between Mrs. Curren’s death and her loving gift to her daughter. Through Derrida’s remarks on the gift, I intend to illustrate that Mrs. Curren’s letter can be understood as a gift of sacrifice, a gift of death, or a gift of love. In view of the presupposition that the papers should be mailed after her death, Mrs. Curren’s papers destroy the principle of reciprocity, which is the hidden rules observed by Marcel Mauss in the cultural phenomena. However, the letter only appears itself as a pure gift when we take Derrida’s philosophical insights into consideration. Mrs. Curren’s decision becomes understandable if we introduce Derrida’s theory of gift to read the novel: given through her death, through sacrificing her life, the parcel of papers becomes the gift that Derrida describes as the “not impossible but the impossible” (Derrida 1992: 7). This gift to her daughter is given out of her expectation and beyond -15-.

(22) her imagination— it gives nothing in reality, but nonetheless it gives love and time. The condition of giving is also difficult, because she must sacrifice herself. By the time when the donor is dead, Mrs. Curren’s communication of love begins. In this chapter, I intend to argue that Mrs. Curren’s posthumous letter is a pure form of the gift. I: The Discouse of Gift In the following analysis, I will first investigate the concept of the gift through a series of introduction from Mauss to Derrida. The series of theoretical discussions on the gift can be viewed as a conversation between Mauss and Derrida.1 It is first discussed by Mauss and latter reached a peak when Derrida proposed his theories on the gift. Before we take a deeper probe into Derrida’s theoretical issues on the gift, the understanding of Mauss’s theory of the gift is indispensible.. 1.1 The theoretical inspection of the gift begins with Mauss’s The Gift. Although the gift is generally understood to be offered on a voluntary basis, Mauss thinks the act of giving and taking plays the fundamental principles in gift giving. He proposes that the act of gift-giving which appears as a token of generosity in fact implies the mutual obligation and exchange. In this way, the seemingly generous act in fact turns into the mutual obligation to strengthen the social relationship: [P]resentations which are in theory voluntary, disinterested and spontaneous, but are in fact obligatory and interested. The form usually. 1. In addition to Mauss and Derrida’s works, there are still a number of insightful works which have. been helpful in understanding what “a gift” is. The gift may refer to the birth in Emmanuel Levinas’s Otherwise than Being and Hélèn Cixous’s “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways/Forays.” The gift as violence and obligation is posed by Pierre Bourdieu in his “Selections from The Logic of Practice,” and “Marginalia—Some Additional Notes on the Gift.” Some points of view raised in George Bataille’s “The Notion of Expenditure” discussion relate the gift to the notion of Expenditure. -16-.

(23) taken is that of the gift generously offered; but the accompanying behavior is formal pretence and social deception, while the transaction itself is based on obligation and economic self-interest. (Mauss 1) Mauss contends that rather than a voluntary and generous giving, the act to give in fact demands a return which the recipient is obligated to do. The reciprocal behavior therefore forms the idea of gift-exchange and circulation and constitutes the primary economic system. When gift-exchange happens, such an idea of obligation becomes one of the major principles in the universal culture codes. To illustrate the obligation of giving and return, nothing is clearer than the example of the potlatch. The potlatch is the festival of gift-giving practiced by the primitive tribes in North America. In the potlatch, “[t]he obligation to give is the essence” (Mauss 39), since for the chief, the capability to give represents the abundant wealth and superiority of himself and his tribes. Once a chief receives presents, he is “constrained” to give back more, because “the obligation to accept is no less constraining [and one] has no right to refuse a gift, or to refuse to attend the potlatch” (Mauss 41). If he fails to give more back, he may jeopardize himself in throwing himself into a shameful and inferior situation. Under the code of mutuality, it is implied that the chief either loses his face or gains more power by the choice he makes. Returning after receiving thus becomes imperative. Consequently, in a potlatch the reciprocity is by no means a generous act; instead, “under a voluntary guise [it is] in essence strictly obligatory” (Mauss 3). However, the obligation that always demands one to repay in the future has much to do with the concept of taonga and hau. The concept taonga is defined by Mauss as the products or objects people can possess, while the word hau signifies the spirit of the gift, due to which people feel obliged to return the gift: -17-.

(24) The taonga and all strictly personal possessions have a hau, a spiritual power. You give me taonga, I give it to another, the latter gives me taonga back, since he is forced to do so by the hau of my gift; and … I must return to you what is in fact the product of the hau of your taonga. (Mauss 9) Based on Mauss’s words, taonga might not be the same every time when people exchange their gifts. However, hau is always traveling along with taonga from one giver to another, arousing the receiver’s obligation and urging him to return another taonga with even greater value. We may infer that it is hau that maintains the circulation of gift-exchange, or we may say hau is the root of every imperative in the economy of the gift (or primary cause of the receiver’s obligation). Mauss’s arguments bring us to reach the conclusion: no gift can get rid of the economic circulation of exchange. However, Mauss’s theory of the gift is later persuasively challenged by Derrida. While Mauss claims that there is no such a gift which can isolate itself from the economy of exchange, Derrida proposes that in the economy of exchange there is no possibility to find a gift.. 1.2 In Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, Derrida points out the ambivalence of the gift in terms of its conception by bringing forward the question of exchange in the gift. Based on the previous discussion on Mauss’s theory, a gift should be always considered in relation to economy; however, Derrida points out the conception’s aporia: [I]s not the gift, if there is any, also that which interrupts economy [and that ] which in suspending economic calculation, no longer gives rise to exchange” (7)? What Derrida calls as a gift should not bear the value in terms of economy, because economy entails “the value of exchange, of circulation, of return” (Derrida 1992:6), -18-.

(25) while these conditions “designate simultaneously the conditions of the impossibility of the gift” (Derrida 1992:12). If there is a gift, it should reside outside the circulation of exchange, defying the economic system and reciprocity. Up to this point, Derrida thoroughly reverses the Maussian gift by proposing that the foremost principle and premise of gift-giving is the lack of reciprocity between the giver and the receiver. To further illustrate what a gift is, Derrida assigns it the term aneconomic: “If the figure of the circle is essential to economics, the gift must “remain aneconomic” (Derrida 1992:7). In other words, a pure gift is non-reciprocal; it must not lay any return on the receiver. A gift must present itself as anti-economy. To disclose the essence of a gift, one must stop identifying a gift as “a gift.” Derrida continues to state that the simple “identification of the gift” will undermine the nature of a gift (Derrida 1992:14). Whenever there is a gift, it must not appear itself as a gift in the viewpoint of the giver and the receiver: It cannot be gift as gift except by not being present as gift. Neither to the “one” nor to the “other.” If the other perceives or receives it, if he or she keeps it as gift, the gift is annulled. But the one who gives it must not see it or know it either; otherwise, he begins, at the threshold, as soon as he intends to give, to pay himself with a symbolic recognition, to praise himself, to approve of himself, to gratify himself, to congratulate himself, to give back to himself symbolically the value of what he thinks he has given or what he is preparing to give. (Derrida 1992:14) The definition of gift is therefore in extreme contrast to the popularly recognized meaning. A gift should maintain in the form that the donee – the receiver – “not give back, amortize, reimburse, acquit himself, enter into a contract, and that he never have contracted a debt” (Derrida 1992:13). Neither the giver nor the receiver should be -19-.

(26) aware of the existence of the gift, whether it is viewed from the symbolic meaning or recognized as a real entity. The definition of the Derridean gift, through the denial of possession and dispossession, involves the renouncement of itself as “a gift.” To this point, a gift becomes a gift when it is not “a gift.” But the whole discussion of the gift does not end at the conclusion of its self-denial. If indeed there is a gift, it arises when one “gives what [he] does not have” (Derrida 1992:2). A pure gift gives time. According to Derrida, “The difference between a gift and every other operation of pure and simple exchange is that the gift gives time. There where there is gift, there is time” (Derrida 1992: 41). It is very difficult to locate the notion of time into the economy of gift or the circle of exchange, precisely because time is not a substantial entity but “the medium in which things are given” (Guenther 52). When one gives time to the other, he does not lose nor does he gain anything. To explain time as a gift, Derrida introduces a reading of Madame de Maintenon’s sentences: “The King takes all my time; the rest I give to Saint-Cyr, to whom I would like to give all” (Derrida 1992:1). In Madame de Maintenon’s phrases, despite the king occupying “all her time,” a remainder of time “slips through the grasp of the king, and which Madame de Maintenon gives to Saint-Cyr2” (Guenther 51). However, since the king has taken all her time, what remainder of time could she possibly have to give? Perhaps the insufficiency of the rest of the time becomes a drive to give more time, but what. is to be noted is that in the gift of given time one gives what he does. not have—thus, he does not lose when he gives. Therefore, in Madame de Maintenon’s story, she does not lose any time when the king takes her time away. Significantly, in The Gift of The Other, this formulation of the gift is adopted in search of the secret of birth: “The formulation of the gift sheds light on the sense in 2. Saint-Cyr is a school founded by her to enlighten young noblewomen. -20-.

(27) which the process of reproduction exceeds circularity to merge as a gift of the other” (52). What birth gives to a baby is not something which can be possessed by people. Rather, birth as a gift gives time to the baby, precisely because the baby “comes t o presence in and through the gift” (Guenther 52). The process of growing, of coming to exist is the gift itself. The gift of time is not about to give a substantial entity; it provides the “opportunities” to the other, so that more things will be brought by the given time. Therefore, in Guenther’s view, the gift of time is the gift of birth that ruptures the economy of circular exchange. However, that the gift ruptures the economy of exchange eventually renders the gift into the economy of sacrifice. Though in Given Time it is not Derrida’s concern to explore the theme of sacrifice, in The Gift of Death Derrida specifies this particular relation between the gift and sacrifice. For this, I turn to the reading of The Gift of Death. Pushing the concept of the gift to its extreme, Derrida further argues that a pure gift, in addition to its being secluded from the reciprocal economy, eventually renders itself in the economy of sacrifice. In The Gift of Death, it is possible to read a gift in a number of ways: a genuine gift derives from one’s death, from one’s sacrifice to whom he loves, and he must come to hate what he loves; he must sacrifice the ethical duty. Relating the definition of the gift to the experience of death/sacrifice, Derrida implies that a gift comes from one’s death, from one’s willingness to sacrifice: Between on the one hand this denial that involves renouncing the self, this abnegation of the gift, of goodness, or of the generosity of the gift that must with-draw, hide, in fact sacrifice itself in order to give, and on the other hand the repression that would transform the gift into an economy of sacrifice, is there not a secret affinity …? (Derrida 1995:30-31). -21-.

(28) Interweaving the death and the gift together, Derrida actually assigns “a new signification of death, a new apprehension of death” (Derrida 1995:31). The pure form of the gift, according to the Darridean theories, can be discovered when a person sacrifices his own life and when he dies under the condition of dying for the other. In rereading the biblical story of Abraham’s sacrifice of his only son – Issac, Derrida thinks the sacrifice of Issac is a genuine gift.3 The story in the Old Testament depicts the dilemma Abraham faces when God testifies him by asking him to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. By faith and loyalties to God Abraham must keep the sacrifice a secret and offer up his son. Therefore, he tells a lie to Issac, bring him to a mountain in order to supply a burnt offering to God. When he is about to slain Isaac, God sends an angels to prevent Abraham’s killing, saying “Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything upon him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me”(Genesis 22:12) . At last, Issac is spared the life and God provides a lamb in place of Issac to be burnt. On the side of Abraham, the sacrificial ritual is still completed, because he does not sacrifice the conception of sacrifice. Even though the sacrifice has been fully carried out without Issac’s being killed, the sacrifice of Issac is as real in reality as that which works in a symbolic way. Substituting the lamb for Issac, Abraham consolidates a bond of love between he and God. Abraham’s love is a genuine gift to God; it is a gift given through sacrifice, a gift of death. The sacrifice, from the Derridean viewpoints, can be interpreted as a pure gift for God, because Abraham has the determination to sacrifice his son’s life, or even to destroy his beloved. When such a sacrifice for the other gains nothing for one person,. 3. The story is specified by Derrida mostly in the third chapter of The Gift of Death: “Whom to Give to. (Knowing Not to Know)”. -22-.

(29) what is bequeathed “is not some thing, but goodness itself, a giving goodness, the act of giving or the donation of the gift. A goodness that must not only forget itself but whose source remains inaccessible to the donee” (Derrida 1995: 41). The action of sacrifice involves goodness. It is a gift sent in order to love the other, to respond to the other, a good intention “beyond all calculation” (Derrida 1995:51). As Linda Greenwood states that “[d]eath is given as life for another, and death occurs at the point when the person is most alive” (187), the infinite love consists of a person’s will to renounce himself in order to offer the boundless love. In the discourse of dying for the other, the “will” to sacrifice relates a gift to goodness and death. Such a gift of death that renders a dissymmetrical relationship between the giver and the receiver appears itself without reciprocity. This gift, as Cheah proposes, is a genuine gift (43). Nonetheless, the infinite love is never given in an easy way. Such a sacrificial gift that asks nothing in return would be hardly achievable, in that one must hate what he loves in order to give. A person must hate what he loves in order to give out his genuine gift. According to Derrida, despite his absolute pain, Abraham must give his infinite love to God by hating his son, since the conception of sacrifice presupposes that one sacrifices what he loves: If I put to death or grant death to what I hate it is not a sacrifice. I must sacrifice what I love. I must come to hate what I love, in the same moment, at the instant of granting death. I must hate and betray my own, that is to say offer them the gift of death by means of the sacrifice, not insofar as I hate them, that would be too easy, but insofar as I love them. I must hate them insofar as I love them. Hate wouldn’t be hate if it only hated the hateful, that would be too easy. It must hate what is most lovable. Hate cannot be hate, it can only be the sacrifice of love to love. (Derrida 1995:64) -23-.

(30) For Derrida, it is impossible to sacrifice what one hates, nor can one sacrifice what he wants to destroy. A genuine gift can only be given under the condition that one sacrifices the lovable, the charitable. In Linda Greenwood’s words, “[t]rue sacrifice occurs when one is willing to put to death what one loves, [and in this sense] ‘hate’ becomes an extension of a greater understanding of what love involves” (186). Overall, a genuine gift demands us to sacrifice what we love. In addition to the gift given out of death and love, what else does Abraham’s story teach us, in his way to sacrifice? In reading the biblical story, Derrida also implies that one must give the gift through the transgression of the ethical rules. Abraham, in showing his infinite love to God, is determined to kill his son. He desires to respond to the command ordered by God; however, slaughtering his son will surely render him in the situation of committing murderer, and in this way, Abraham might put himself at the risk of violating ethics and every human law, and especially the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill decreed by God.” While offering fathomless love to God, “the ethical [the possibility to commit human law and violate morality] is a temptation” that Abraham has to resist (Derrida 1995:61). His absolute duty and faith to God presumes that he should transcend and denounce all the ethical duties and human laws. Here, by taking Abraham’s story, Derrida points out that in order to offer a genuine gift to the other with whom one wants to maintain a relationship, the ethical duties he bears to the society must be suspended: As soon as I enter into a relation with the other, […] I know that I can respond only by sacrificing ethics, that is , by sacrificing whatever obliges me to also respond, in the same way, in the same instant to all the others. (Derrida 1995:68). -24-.

(31) As far as the gift is concerned, one confronts the dilemma of either obeying the ethical or defying the ethical.. II: The Gift of Death in Age of Iron When we read Age of Iron, Derrida’s discourse on gift is helpful because it enables us to read beyond the superficial scenario. The parcel of papers is significant because it is closely related to her death, and with Derrida’s remarks on the gift I intend to argue that it is a manifestation of a genuine gift. It operates as a gift of no reciprocity, a gift of infinite love, a gift of death, and a gift of sacrifice.. 2.1 Applying Derrida’s theories of the gift to read Age of Iron, readers may find the letter can be viewed as a genuine gift, because the letter fails to be returned or taken back in any way. In contrast to the Maussian concept of the gift that implies a reciprocity or exchange, Mrs. Curren’s papers are a gift which does not enter into the circuit of reciprocity. First, coming to presence as her daughter’s inheritance, the letter is not going to be returned. It is a gift, packed up with Mrs. Curren’s words like a bottle full of sweets. However, Mrs. Curren insists that the gift to her daughter be sent after her death. This is the task she cannot accomplish by herself, and thus she asks Mr. Vercueil to mail the parcel of letter for her. Whenever the letter is sent, the gift giver’s disappearance will violate the gift circulation of exchange, and it is not possible for her daughter to return the gift to her mother who has already passed away. That is, because of Mrs. Curren’s death, the daughter as a receiver is deprived of her opportunities to repay or show gratitude to her mother. Within this context, the gift from Mrs. Curren. -25-.

(32) does not endow any debt on her daughter, neither in the symbolical nor in reality.4 Also, does Mrs. Curren’s daughter receive her mother’s letter eventually? Because of her decision, Mrs.Curren can never know whether the letter really reaches her daughter or not, as one of many passages that could be quoted to show: Will they [these papers] reach you? Have they reached you? Two ways of asking the same question, a question to which I will never know the answer. (32) From Mrs. Curren’s words, it is not guaranteed that the letter will be sent to her daughter eventually. Mrs. Curren’s gift takes the risk of failing to reach the receiver in that Mr. Vercueil might not mail the letter; if it is so, then the receiver will be absent from the circulation of gift-giving. In this case, the receiver’s uncertainty of whether he/she may receive the letter will lead to the denial of Mrs. Curren as the giver and her daughter as the receiver. Mrs. Curren and her daughter are unable to be identified as the giver and the receiver who hold the symmetrical relationship of giving and taking, and thus the papers cannot be perceived as a gift in terms of the secular value. In a sense, when giving the papers, Mrs. Curren gives what she cannot have. Asking to mail the papers after death, she gives more time to her daughter to stay safely in a foreign country, the United States. The formulation of the gift sheds new lights on the given papers, since the belated gift generate more time that makes possible her daughter’s staying at a peaceful country. Mrs. Curren’s daughter vows not to return to South Africa until “[the people who enact the apartheid system] are hanging from the lampposts” (75). Knowing her. 4. According to Pheng Cheah, a genuine gift should not be identified as a gift by both the receiver or the. giver, because “the former lead to indebtedness, the desire to repay, gratitude, and so on, and the latter leads to an expectation for repayment or at the very least, self-gratification, praise, or self congratulation for having been generous. ” -26-.

(33) daughter’s resolution, Mrs. Curren never asks her back, despite she being ill with cancer. Under this circumstance, the private letter serves as the only way to faithfully reflect Mrs. Curren’s psychological condition at the same time eliminating any possibility to let her daughter back. In other words, the parcel of letter, at the same time of communicating Mrs. Curren’s true condition, brings forth more time for her daughter to live, perhaps permanently, in the United States “still, solid, alive, at peace” (75). Neither Mrs. Curren nor her daughter can possess time, yet through Mrs. Curren’s giving, the daughter is given the time and the future of her life in America. Derrida remarks: “[T]o give time” is not to give a given present but the condition of presence of any present in general …. To give time, the day, or life is to give nothing, nothing determinate, even if it is to give the giving of any possible giving, even if it gives the condition of giving. (Derrida 1992,54) We do not know whether the daughter is willing to be given the gift of given time, but Mrs. Curren’s papers give her daughter the “condition” to continue the life she makes for herself. Such a gift of time, materially speaking, gives nothing nor takes anything; thus it ruptures the economic reciprocity. In terms of a genuine gift, if Mrs. Curren’s letter is the case, then it is also appropriate to view it as a gift of death, a gift given at the price of Mrs.Curren’s sacrifice for her daughter. While Abraham sacrifices his son to love God, Mrs. Curren, bearing the same love like Abraham, sacrifices the very last chances to see her daughter, in order to consolidate a relationship of love between she and her daughter. Mrs. Curren’s death is inevitable, because she is diagnosed of cancer. However, she chooses to live her remaining times bitterly and to pass away in such a lonely condition without her daughter’s accompany, even though her daughter is the -27-.

(34) closest person she turns to as soon as she learns she is dying. In the moment of gifting, a dissymmetrical relationship is built between Mrs. Curren and her daughter, since Mrs Curren is called to perform the love described by she as “ the love we have no alternative but to feel toward those to whom we give ourselves to devour or discard”(9). Her willingness to renounce the chances of seeing her daughter in person manifests, as what Tata states, the “sacrificial nature of gifting” (49). Even though she does not “kill” herself, the determination to sacrifice her life, by removing the chances to see her daughter till her death, still makes the sacrificial action real, both in a symbolic sphere or in reality. What she cannot sacrifice is the idea of sacrifice. For the rest in her private life, everything can be given up: “After I have cared for [my daughter], there is little space left in my heart. The rest must, as they say, go to pot” (197). The letter represents a consolidated bond between the dying Curren and her daughter, which is the only thing worth caring in Mrs. Curren’s private life, while in her public sphere, her caring will lie on the relationship between her identity as a white and the other black South Africans, which will be further discussed in the following two chapters. Sending the genuine gift to her daughter eventually denotes Mrs. Curren sacrifice of every standard of sanity: she exploits the daughter’s chance to learn her mother’s true condition, and she further violates the ethical rules. How can we interpret Mrs. Curren’s concealing the truth from her daughter that she is dying? Mrs. Curren confesses that she conceals her illness from her daughter, and even though she has a chance to ask her daughter back, she decides not to reveal the truth of her condition: “She knows I was sick, she knows I had an operation; she thinks it was successful and I am getting better” (72).Through her death, Mrs. Curren offers her daughter a gift, giving her the “opportunity” not to return to South Africa, a deformed land because of the enactment of apartheid. In this sense, Mrs. Curren -28-.

(35) sacrifices her life in exchange of her daughter’s opportunity to escape away from the hellish country: “This country […]. Thank God she is out” (60). What is to be noticed is that such a sacrificial movement is undoubtedly from the mother’s immeasurable love to the daughter. For both Abraham and Mrs. Curren, the act to sacrifice is motivated by the boundless love to God/ the daughter. Abraham sacrifices in order to love God, while Mrs. Curren offers her own life in order to love her daughter. More than once, Mrs. Curren describes her daughter to be “flesh of [her] flesh, blood of [her] blood,” the life coming from her own life (11). For Mrs. Curren, bearing a child can be understood as giving one’s life to the child: When you bear a child from your own body you give your life to that child. Above all to the first child, the firstborn. Your life is no longer with you, it is no longer yours, it is with the child. That is why we do not really die: we simply pass on our life, the life that was for a while in us, and are left behind. (76). The letter is sufficient in expressing Mrs. Curren’s sacrificial intention as well as her immeasurable love to her daughter. It is a gift of death. Nonetheless, to give the infinite love to her daughter is never an easy task, as Mrs. Curren writes in her papers: “How easy it is to love a child, how hard to love what a child turns into” (57). In terms of Derrida’s remarks on the gift of death, the decision to conceal the truth can be interpreted as the will to sacrifice, while to live her remaining time alone can be viewed as her hatred for what she once loved most. Mrs. Curren loves her life, but in order to sacrifice, she must hate what she loves. I propose the word hate, in Mrs. Curren’s case, is not to show hostility to her life, but to refuse to show any kindness to herself. Facing her impending death, Mrs. Curren should seize the last days of her time, fulfilling dreams she has never had the chance to do. Yet, she -29-.

(36) does not leave for her daughter, nor does she phone her daughter to tell her the true condition. Except writing her letter, Mrs. Curren cuts every connection between her daughter and her, which can be understood as a way to display no kindness to her own life, sacrificing her remaining time that she cherishes greatly. At the beginning of the novel, it seems Mrs. Curren is still struggling whether to hate what she loves, or to sacrifice what she cherishes: “we will be weaned from our body …. Yet this first life, this life on earth, on the body of earth – will there, can there ever be a better? Despite all the glooms and despairs and rages, I have not let go of my love of it” (13). Here, Mrs. Curren elucidates the difficulties to hate what she loves. However, with the linear proceeding of the novel, Mrs. Curren strengthens her resolve to hate her life: “how hard it is to kill oneself! One clings so tight to life! It seems to me that something other than the will must come into play at the last interest” (119). Despite her craving to meet her daughter, in her remaining time, she plans not to let this happen. Due to her being cruel to her life, she comes to hate what she loves. One more reason that specifies Mrs. Curren’s letter as a genuine gift is that Mrs. Curren transgresses the ethical rules. In The Gift of Death, Derrida writes, “secrecy is as intolerable for ethics as it is for philosophy or for dialectics in general. […] The ethics as such is the universal” (62). In terms of ethics and philosophy, the demand for manifestation, unveiling is imperative that there should be no secrets. In the story of Abraham and Isaac, Abraham is asked to perform an act which violates all the ethics and conventions in the society. In order to give a genuine gift to God, Abraham chooses not to tell the truth to Isaac and the other family members. From the story, Derrida concludes that one will put himself at the risk of transpassing the ethical rules if he keeps a secret, since “the manifest is given priority over the hidden or the secret, universal generality is superior to the individual; no irreducible secret that can -30-.

(37) be legally justified” (Derrida 1995:63). Similar to Abraham, Mrs. Curren resists the desire to reveal her true feelings to the other people, including her daughter. She lies to Mr. Vercueil: “I have no intention of summoning my daughter back. I may long for her but I don’t want her here,” but at the same time, she cannot help but cry in her mind that “what a liar I am” (74). Not only to Mr. Vercueil, she also lies to her daughter. When phoning her daughter, Mrs. Curren says: “Tired but otherwise well […]. I am taking things slowly. Florence is a pillar of strength, as ever, and I have a new man to help in the garden” (126). But in reality, Mrs. Curren has not been physically and psychologically well since she fell ill. Florence has already left Mrs. Curren’s house, and Mr. Vercueil cannot be viewed as a qualified helper. Mrs. Curren fails to be ethically sincere in that she must give a pure gift to her daughter. In terms of the ethical rules, Mrs. Curren’s lies make her ethical duty violated. In addition, the unilateral love to her daughter even urges Mrs. Curren to destroy the ethics of reciprocity. The rules of reciprocity are claimed by Mrs. Curren as “[h]ome truths, a mother’s truth” that she has always pursued (5), since as a mother, she used to embrace her daughter in hoping she would be embraced in the future: “We embrace to be embraced. We embrace our children to be folded in the arms of the future, to pass ourselves on beyond death, to be transported. That is how it was when I embraced you, always” (5). Such a notion of reciprocity can be found relevant to the Golden Rule, a series of social/ethical/ religious practices according to which one should treat others as he wants to be treated (Wattles 107). However, her belief of reciprocity has always made her embrace morally inferior to the notion of unilateral love, and it is not until her nearing death does Mrs. Curren “begin to understand the true meaning of embrace” (5). Nearing the death she starts to stop the thought of reciprocity and reach a higher ethical phase – giving her infinite love without taking -31-.

(38) anything back. Such is her betrayal of ethics by which she can send a genuine gift to her daughter. As Tata suggests that “we transcend it in order to ascend to a higher phase, as with Kierkegaard’s concept of the religious, or we suspend it in order to return to it” (54), what Mrs. Curren wants to achieve is something that either overrides the ethical rules or returns to it. From the violation of the ethical rules, Mrs. Curren comes to realize the supreme principle of love. Violating the ethical rules, Mrs. Curren comes to send a genuine gift. Such is Mrs. Curren’s gift that we find resonating the Derridean gift. The journey of writing for Mrs. Curren is a long process of giving, and her very secret of gift is inextricably linked to her impending death. We learn from Given Time that gift-giving is not about giving a gift at all. Derrida’s observation teaches us that what works beyond the give-and-take relationship is the human relation that nullifies the economy of reciprocity. This unilateral giving does not ask for a reciprocal debt. In Age of Iron, Mrs. Curren’s letter is a key to the understanding of ethics and love. Whether the gift is the possibility or the impossibility, what Mrs. Curren conveys in her letter will nourish her daughter. The time and love she bestows might be beyond the daughter’s awareness, but what flows to her daughter is fathomless. It is given by Mrs. Curren’s dedicating of herself, alongside with her total withdraw from her daughter. Mrs. Curren’s gift is about the reason she gives: love. However, in writing a letter which may never reach her daughter, Mrs. Curren in fact attempts to (re)build a relation to her unresponsive daughter, even though it is only a fantasy of union that cannot exist in reality. As she puts it that “no matter what the word, through it I stretch out a hand to you […] I must reach out to you,” a (re)built relation to her unresponsive daughter is what she searches in this unilateral way (9). But her daughter is not the only figure Mrs. Curren finds necessary to response, for in the journey of tracing truth -32-.

(39) Mrs. Curren gradually finds herself exposed to the need to be responsible, to be hospitable. Having discussed Mrs. Curren’s letter as a gift lacking reciprocity, in my latter chapters I will proceed to examine the notions of responsibility and hospitality, as well as their intricate relation to Mrs. Curren’s impending death.. -33-.

(40) Chapter Two: To Think Conditionally: Host and Conditional Hospitality. When referring to the specific characteristics of Coetzee’s writing, Samuel Durrant comments: Rather than providing a direct historical relation of the conditions of apartheid, [Coetzee’s novels] instead provide a way of relating to such a history. They teach us that the true work of the novel consists not in the factual recovery of history. (Durrant 431) Indeed, what one finds in Life& Times of Michael K is the description of the protagonist K’s torment and ignorance without specific historical context and space, while in Waiting for the Barbarians the non-specific milieu refuses to “acknowledge its historical sources or to make any allusions to the specific barbarism of the apartheid regime” (JanMohamed 73). However, compared to the other protagonists in Coetzee’s earlier novels, Mrs. Curren in Age of Iron is described in a more direct way in her interaction with the late apartheid era and her location in the historical or social context in South Africa, simply owing to Mrs. Curren being highly aware of her inseparability with the colonial history in South Africa. Although quite dissatisfied with her deeply involvement with the apartheid history, she knows clear that she is in any way constructed in the system: A crime was committed long ago. How long ago? I do not know. […] So long ago that I was born into it. It is part of my inheritance. It is part of me, I am part of it. […] Though it was not a crime I asked to be committed, it was committed in my name. I raged at time against the men who did the dirty. -34-.