J. M. Coetzee and the Paradox of Postcolonial Authorship

In her thoroughgoing account of J. M. Coetzee's literary career, Jane Poyner illuminates the author's life-long engagement with the problems of colonialism and 'postcolonialism'. How successful has this member of a white South African academic elite been in accommodating his various roles as author, public intellectual, and citizen? What are the ethics of writing fiction within postcolonial and, more specifically, South African contexts? From "Dusklands" to "Disgrace" and from "Waiting for the Barbarians" to "Elizabeth Costello", Poyner traces how Coetzee rehearses and revises his understanding of the ethics of intellectualism in parallel with the emergence of the 'new South Africa'. She contends that Coetzee not only introduces a singularly modernist reading of the South African situation to the field of postcolonial studies but also makes postcolonial interventions into the modernist tradition by reworking novels of this literary movement. In addition, she is attentive to the ways his writing reflects Coetzee's evolving views of the writer's proper role with respect to the changing ethical demands of contemporary political life. Theoretically sophisticated and accessibly written, her book is a major contribution to our understanding of the Nobel Laureate and to postcolonial studies. In her analysis of the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee's literary and intellectual career, Jane Poyner illuminates the author's abiding preoccupation with what Poyner calls the "paradox of postcolonial authorship". Writers of conscience or conscience-stricken writers of the kind Coetzee portrays, whilst striving symbolically to bring the stories of the marginal and the oppressed to light, always risk reimposing the very authority they seek to challenge. From Dusklands to Diary of a Bad Year, Poyner traces how Coetzee rehearses and revises his understanding of the ethics of intellectualism in parallel with the emergence of the "new South Africa". She contends that Coetzee's modernist aesthetics facilitate a more exacting critique of the problems that encumber postcolonial authorship, including the authority it necessarily engenders. Poyner is attentive to the ways Coetzee's writing addresses the writer's proper role with respect to the changing ethical demands of contemporary political life. Theoretically sophisticated and accessible, her book is a major contribution to our understanding of the Nobel Laureate and to postcolonial studies. Contents......Page 6 Abbreviations......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 10 Introduction: Positioning the Writer......Page 12 1 “Father Makes Merry with Children”: Madness and Mythology in Dusklands......Page 26 2 Refusing to “Yield to the Spectre of Reason”: The Madwoman in the Attic in In the Heart of the Country......Page 44 3 Madness and Civilization in Waiting for the Barbarians......Page 64 4 Cultivating the Margins in the Trial of Michael K: “Strategies in the Service of Skepticism”......Page 80 5 Bodying Forth the Other: Friday and the “Discursive Situation” in Foe......Page 102 6 Writing in the Face of Death: “False Etymologies” and “Home Truths” in the Age of Iron......Page 122 7 Evading the Censor/Censoring the Self in The Master of Petersburg......Page 140 8 Truth and Reconciliation in Disgrace......Page 160 9 Coetzee’s Acts of Genre in the Later Works: Truth-telling, Fiction and the Public Intellectual......Page 178 Works Cited......Page 196 Index......Page 210 Illuminating J.M. Coetzee's preoccupation, from Dusklands to Diary of a Bad Year, with the paradox of postcolonial authorship centering on the authority authorship engenders, Jane Poyner examines Coetzee's line of author-narrators to trace how he rehearses and revises his understanding of intellectual practice at a time of seismic change in South Africa. Her theoretically sophisticated and accessibly written book is a major contribution to our understanding of the Nobel Laureate and to postcolonial studies Offers an account of J M Coetzee's literary career. From "Dusklands" to "Disgrace" and from "Waiting for the Barbarians" to "Elizabeth Costello", this work traces how Coetzee rehearses and revises his understanding of the ethics of intellectualism in parallel with the emergence of the 'new South Africa'.