Waiting for the Barbarians

WAITING FOR BARBERIANS (1982)

“Life is colorless without barbarians.  Without them, there would be no red or orange or yellow alerts. That is why every generation must have its barbarians. But the best barbarians are those for whom you wait. Barbarians are like messiahs, always coming but never arriving. And contrary to what you might have heard, barbarians never die” (http://brittlepaper.com)

QUOTES:

“Mr. Coetzee tells the story of an imaginary Empire, set in an unspecified place and time, yet recognizable as a ‘universalized’ version of South Africa . . . The result is a realistic fable, at once stark, exciting and economical” (New York Times).

*** Waiting for the Barbarians depicts the abusive power and class hierarchies through the eyes of the Magistrate, the narrator. Examining the way the power relations is presented in the novel, it is worth relating to the notion of oppressor and the oppressed where the power relations  occur between the “the empire” and  the anticipated barbarians. These social and political deviations between the two classes (the empire and the barbarians) and the relationship between them reminded Althusser’s State and subject relationship. Louis Althusser introduced the terms ISA (Ideological State Apparatus) and RSA (Repressive State Apparatus) which denote that in order to impose its productive power, the State applies control  via ideology and  through repression. The repressive control thus entitles exerting power and dominance through violence.  Hence, through violent tortures, the empire was reinforcing its dominance over the barbarians. However, the tyrannical power relationship in the novel is more complex as its manifestation can be seen also in the relationships of the empire and Magistrate as well as in between Magistrate and the barbarian hostage girl.  Thus, the power and control function through triangular principle where the empire/state imposes its dominance on Magistrate, who has been a loyal servant of the empire at the frontier settlement (and thus  serving as its subject) but at the same time he in the beginning was functioning as the state, as one of the repressors of Barbarians.  Magistrate, hence can be seen as the subject of the state, as the carrier, the trans-figure between the State and the Barbarian, but also in a narrower scale, functioning as State apparatusfor barbarians. His decision to keep and treat the barbarian girl, have her work, and engage in sexual relations, to some extent show his decision making power and control over her. The complex relationships thus divulge the different powers each in the function of state-subject or the oppressor/ colonizer and the oppressed/colonized. Hence, it seems like the class-based ideologies and power relations have diffuse effects on the participants who are then engaged in a multi-power- imposition relations and can function as a state and subject. As a conclusion, power relations, repression, violence, self-mastery, and complicity of oppression account for socio-political empire, which has authority and power, and therefore, subsumes individuals into its machinery.

KY

Works Cited

Louis Althusser 1970.” transcribed by Bluden, Andy “ Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Marxsists. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, Monthly Review Press 1971; Web. 19 Sept. 2011.