Slow Man

SLOW MAN (2005)

QUOTE:

            “I take this novel to be a scrutiny of disappointment and irresolution, a chicken-and-egg affair that does not yield satisfactory answers. . . . beautifully composed, deeply thought, wonderfully written” (New York Times)

* * *

Slow Man, is a story of an old photographer who loses his leg in a bicycle accident, falls for a married caregiver, becomes a  novel character for the writer Elizabeth Castello, but in the end rejects her companionship and prefers his helpless, lonely, miserable life. Is it this simple? No, Coetzee’s story is not that linear and simple. Slow Man is about a life story of loss, castration, disability, change, displacement, and of yearning for self wholeness through other. The title itself suggests the duality of meaning.  “Slow Man” can be interpreted as a man who moves slowly due to amputated leg or as a man who undergoes a slow, graduate change in life ( one of the definitions of “slow” according to Websters Dictionary Online as adjective is “ requiring a comparatively long time for growing, changing“).

Hence, Slow Man  is a story of yearning for whole self. The repressed anxiety from castration of masculine power due to the loss of the leg makes Paul not only feel disabled but seek a displacement. According to Freud, “Displacement is caused by repression of deeper, unconscious impulses or buried memories from a desire or a trauma.” The term, “return of the repressed” leads to reaction-formations or substitute-formations,” and thus, Paul unconsciously seeks a substitute for his loss of ability in finding love and becoming a godfather for Diego and Marijana’s family.  Later, as Paul loses Maijana or his hope to get love from a married woman with children, he writes a letter to Marijana’s husband begging to become a godfather for their family and support Diego’s educational costs. It is thus, vivid that the loss of his leg evoked unconscious desire to replace it with love or with becoming a “mighty” godfather to gain sense of wholeness. “His affection for his married-with-children nurse accompanies an intense retrospection prompted by his new physical condition” (Hooper Brad).

The desire of self wholeness depicts Lacanian explanation of the Mirror Stage during which human (Lacanian child) upon seeing his image in the mirror realizes the perception of self as being separated and thus alienated. The acknowledgement of being fractured and divided, makes him long for self wholeness. “Because its sense of self is only ever garnered from identifying with the images of these others (or itself in the mirror, as a kind of other), Lacan argues that it demonstrably belongs to human to desire-directly-as or through another or others” (Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Thus, Paul’s repressed desire for ideal self makes him unconsciously search for the “other” and displace the lack with a substituted other. There was a passage in the story that explicitly denoted Paul’s rejection to look into the mirrors which he covered with drape:

“He himself has never been at ease with mirrors. Long ago he draped a cloth over the mirror in the bathroom and taught himself to shave blind. One of the more irritating things the Costello woman did during her stay was to take down the drape. When she left he at once put it back.” 

 I have thought a lot about the role of Elizabeth Costello and her sudden, unexpected, and not even well explained appearance in the novel. Was she indeed a writer who came to stay with Paul to write about his life? Does Coetzee with her appearance suggest the relationship existing in between the writer and the character as to who has the authority and how important the writer’s intent is?  Are Paul and Costello indeed in writer-character relationship? Plato argued that the writer mimics the reality, and then Paul as a photographer also used to mimic the reality. Did then Costello appear to take over the “task” after Paul’s disability? Isn’t it the “rule” of life one takes over the other in the life journey and with this change/displacement life and history continues on? Wasn’t this the same idea under the main theme of retelling Crusoe’s story with a change and displacement, and thus, bringing back the past, the old order to show its displacement with the new?

The reoccurrence of Costello in Coetzee’s novels, the repetitions of different scenes and situations as well as the reoccurrence of sentences, numbers, and passages word by word in almost all of Coetzee’s books indicate the notion of archetype: “a pattern or model that serves as the basis for different, but related, versions of a character, plot, or a theme. In literature, certain characters, images, plots, and themes keep recurring. These recurring patterns are called archetypes. They serve as basic models to which specific cultural details are added. Archetypes are universal and timeless symbols that are so powerful that they change

a bit and reappear in different forms in other types of literature”(Literary Terms). Hence, reoccurrence presents the “universal and timeless symbols”- a symbol that denotes the continuum search for truth and for self.

Hence, Slow Man is a story of our reality, of our search for truth and for self identity through a long path of castration/loss, sense of fragmentation, and thus desire for wholeness which is repressed and displaced through a substitute “other.” This is the story of slow change of human life and desires and human search for self fulfillment.

 ~ KY

Works Cited

Hooper, Brad. “Coetzee, J. M. Slow Man.” Booklist July 2005: 1875+. Literature  Resource Center. Web. 13 Nov. 2011.

“Introduction to Sigmund Freud, Module on Repression.”  CLA Purdue. Psychology. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.

“Jacques Lacan.” Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A peer-Reviewed Academic Resource. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.

“Literary Terms 9^th grade.” PDF.  Web. 13 Nov. 2011.

 

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Foe

FOE (1987)

QUOTES:

“In Foe, Friday is an African, already dehumanised by Defoe. To give speech to Friday would be to colonise him and deny him what remains of his integrity” (Per Wästberg).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Foe is one more of Coetzee’s stories which embraces various themes. The retelling of Daniel Defoe’s story by the writer Daniel Foe unfolds  a very interesting themes of power and subjectivity, language, post-colonialism that still bears the power relations of the  colonizer/ oppressor and  colonized/ oppressed. This is a story of voice and identity which can be taken and also “given” to the oppressed.  First of all, Daniel Defoe’s story of Robinson Crusoe is being retold with a new character, Susan Barton. Secondly, Susan’s adventure story is told by Foe, who alters what she perceives important, and makes it a different-fictional story. Hence, since it is the narrator who usually preserves the voice and the authority over the story, with the change of the narrator the authority and the voice are lost. Thus, taking over the story determines taking over the voice. However, what is more interesting is that Susan Barton, who loses her voice in her own story telling, is attempting to give voice to Friday, who is also voiceless due to the loss of his tongue.

However, the importance of voice/ language, identity, and power/ruler, that seems to be the central theme of the novel, reminded me of Jacques Lacan’s Symbolic Order, which is ruled by the rule of father (the power holder/oppressor) and sign system operation (language). According to  Lacan language gives identity, and  it is in the Symbolic Order when language assigns “I,” before which there is no sense of self. Thus, the unified self positioned by object relations before the Symbolic Order is an illusion. So, it is the over determination of drives, desire for self, the unconscious, and the Symbolic Order of our culture, social language that identifies us and lends/gives us identity. Hence, the language, as well as culture, race, class, and gender make human beings subjects, and there is never a full autonomous identity. The identity is given from outside-exactly as portrayed in Coetzee’s Foe.

~KY

Works Cited

Lacan, Jacques . “The Mirror Stage as Formative Function of the I.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin, Michael Ryan 2^nd ed. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Print. 441-446.

Life and Times of Michael K

                                               

THE LIFE & TIMES OF MICHAEL K. won the Booker prize in 1983.

Life and Times of Michael K is a very interesting story that unfolds such complex themes as power paradigm, civil war, authority, voice, identity, racial ideology, and resistance.  It is a story of dualism; it presents the dialectics of inner and outer worlds, of language and silence, of authority and lack of power, of complexity and simplicity.  In the times of civil war, and power strife, the novel also presents such notions as  simplicity, stillness, silence, and tranquility with which Michael K challenges power relations and cultural ideologies and thus  transgresses beyond the set boundaries to become “ other,”  different. The transgression that exceeds the predetermined performance of the world Michael K lives in, shapes his own identity and recreates his own world. This thus can be refered to Marx’s theory of German Ideology that proclaims “the nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production and how individuals express their life.”  Michael K’s  simple life and his condition of in articulation is  the “product” of the time and the existing power relations, which  also ( it may sound as a paradox or ambiguity) produces Michael K’s silence as a means of expression of his life.

In the novel the use, as well as the switch of the authorial voice (by narrating the story with the third and first person perspectives) is also very interesting. A novel that tells a life story is usually expected to be presented in  the first person perspective; however, the choice of the third- person perspective once again emphasizes the theme of identity and the notion of language as power. Usually, the ability to narrate about oneself identifies one’s voice and individuality and thus the narration with the first person perspective identifies the voice of the narrator. Hence, the voice that determines identity is individual’s language. As Gloria Anzaldua claims language determines, distinguishes, and recreates identity. However, in the life story of Micheal K language is his silence, which also depicts his identity.

Although silence is considered a form of subservience and is usually associated with the lack of power, silence also is a form of communication that shows an ignorant attitude and a move that switches the power from the one who talks to the silent communicator. Moreover, silence provokes questions, debates, and uncertainty, and thus, creates grounds of dominance, leaving others in the state of never-ended expectations. Hence, Michael K uses his silence as a power tool, as such means of communication through which he not only constructs his own identity but also presents his opposition toward domination and power structure. The expectations that the society imposes determine what the appropriate and accepted behaviors are. Mickael’s incomprehensibility doesn’t simply defines a powerless, voiceless black gardener, but rather shows that it is  acceptable by those in authority – the police and the military who demand revealing about himself.

Moreover, I see Michael’s inability and/or rejection to talk about himself not only a resistance towards the world, power, and authority, but also his objective perception of impossible, his reference to the external world towards which there is no access. Silence thus, becomes a medium through which he experience the world and his role within the society based upon the social acceptance, authority recognition, and power hierarchy.

Not having the “access” and “place” in the world, Michael creates his own world in within himself. Therefore, the outside world being covered  and inaccesable for him, Michael, too, covers his own world with his silence about his identity and thus makes his world inaccesable for the outsiders.  Hence, Michael K’s silence is his language, a means to be “other”, and to cover his inner world and his identity, as well as it is the power epitome that grants him freedom, and establishes his self in within him.

 By: K.Yegoryan

Works Cited

Anzaldua, Gloria. “Borderlands/la Frontera.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin, Michael Ryan 2^nd ed. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 1017-1030.

Marx, Karl. “The German Ideology.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin, Michael Ryan 2^nd ed. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 654-658.

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. 

 

 

In the Heart of the Country

In the Heart of the Country is a very interesting and complex novel that explores different themes and thus can be analyzed with different theoretical considerations. In this diary styled novel Coetzee introduces such various themes as lack of identity, pain and pleasure motif, as well as a story of repression and colonization. Hence, through a narration of a life story of a white African girl, Magda, Coetzee introduces passionate striving for individual identity, but also depicts cultural issues and the notion of colonization referring to South African life and reality and the repressive intentions of European countries in the 18th century, which thus give the novel plurality of meaning. Furthermore, the novel is like a puzzle, written in a very unique style that presents some of the events with different outcomes which can be understood through deconstructive analyses of a text or by referring to what Jacques Derrida calls “iterability”- the repetition of the text in new situation. Hence, the novel not only tells a story of an individual unsuccessful life, but also looks for what features of social and cultural life is deemphasized or privileged and aims at achieving a new, deeper understanding of various coexisting problems.

First of all the narrative of a white African girl,Magda, involves a motif to achieve the wholeness of self and relief/pleasure of her repressed desires for sexuality. This desire thus, leads to her hatred, jealousy towards the woman, her father brings home as “a new bride.” Hence, Magda’s inability to experience the pleasure of love, her sexual urges, and her dissatisfaction for not fulfilling her sexual desires represent the lack of establishing her own identity, which then can be related to Lacanian impossible wholeness of self, “plentitude of desire satisfaction” ( Jacques Lacan), and self identification, which Magda is trying to achieve by destroying/ murdering her father’s new bride. Moreover, her hatred toward her father also can be understood through Lacanian theory of self identification through mother’s image, “my father is the absence of my mother, her negative, her death. She is the soft, the fair; he the hard, the dark” (Coetzee 37). Hence, unable to reveal and construct her own identity due to the missing mother, this lack psychologically depresses Magda to the extream of hatred. Besides, in order to establish her own self, to identify her own desires and feel valuable as a woman, Magda compares her with her father’s bride since and as Luce Irigaray claims “ in order to have a relative value, a commodity has to be confronted with another commodity that serves as its equivalent.” However, being equal in gender, Magda was different from Klein-Anna in her skin tone. This difference as well as Magda’s oppressive desires thus can associate her with a colonizer.

In the Heart of the Country, hence also explores and describes the psychological effects of colonialism, portraying Magda as the oppressor and Klein-Anna as the oppressed black woman. Ultimately, Magda’s difference of being white and intelligent as well as her desire not to be “one of the forgotten ones of history” and her eagerness to establish her identity evokes the desire for mastery and domination as a colonizer.

~KY

Works Cited

 

Derrida, Jacques. Of  Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press 1976.

 

Lacan, Jacques . “The Mirror Stage as Formative Function of the I.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin, Michael Ryan 2^nd ed. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Print. 441-446.

 

Martin, Alison. “Luce Iriguray and the Question of the Divine.” Modern Humanities Research association. Mhra texts and Dissertation. Volume 53. Web. 18 Sept. 2011.