A Phenomenological Perception toward the Other in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians

Author(s):  
Yonbom Chung
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Kamel Abdaoui

This paper addresses corporeality as a space of subversion to hegemonic discourses in J. M. Coetzee’s fiction. The body is not only elusive to representation but it is also entrusted with a certain degree of authority that allows it to contravene the systems of normalization imposed by dominant discourse. The paper tends to appropriate poststructuralism and postcolonialism as its main theoretical grid to argue that corporeality in Coetzee’s novels is deployed as a fluid construct that offers a space of interaction between subjectivities beyond the rigid contours of discursive representation. In Dusklands, the clear-cut demarcations erect between the Self and the Other often blur and disintegrate while facing the permeability and extensiveness of the body. In Waiting for the Barbarians and Foe, however, the mutilated and silenced body of the Other is presented as a space of resistance to the Empire’s attempts to inscribe its statement of powerviolently. It is only the diseased body of Mrs. Curren, in Age of Iron, which transforms into an intersubjective space of reciprocity between Self and Other that is capable of overcoming the fixed barriers between subjects. Being an active site of contestation between subjectivities, the textual construction of corporeality in Coetzee's aforementioned novels offers creative opportunities of becoming and grants an imaginative understanding of otherness outside the limits of the logic of binarism encapsulated in colonial and imperialist discourses.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-13
Author(s):  
Jihad Jaafar Waham ◽  
Wan Mazlini Othoman

In Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), J. M. Coetzee cross examines the points of interest of grand states by significance the distinctions from the savages that the strange Empire keeps up. The Empire characterizes itself and strengthens its personality by developing a separation from the brutes on numerous grounds. It keeps up state foundations and keeps records, since itself as a cutting edge express, an advanced story of "crude" brutes. Coetzee's tale uncovered the Empire's tricky endeavors at setting up the other and its confounded ideas of state building. In spite of the fact that the basic elucidations of the novel spotlight on mistreat and the body, this article breaks down the novel's inclusion with royal state building and patriotism. Torment and the body are significant to the extent that they uncover the Empire's endeavors to distinguish it and construct a country. The Empire's disappointment in the greater part of these compliments―as suggested by the end with the Empire down its hang on the boondocks settlement and the settlement's kin sitting tight for the landing of the barbarians―makes us question the bogus presumptions on which numerous magnificent ventures are based. The Empire's inability to safeguard its outskirts, its disadvantage to its heartland, and its breakdown to protect cultivated conduct in its treatment of its subjects and savage detainees are appearances of a confused, beginning organization as opposed to a recognizable and acculturated royal country. In hair-raising the temperamental refinements capturing countries use to pardon their continuance, Coetzee's work affirms an elective ethic of commitment with the other established on the possibility of basic humankind and tolerant acknowledgment of contrast.


2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-77
Author(s):  
Mahdi Teimouri

Viet ThanhNguyen’s The Sympathizer(2015) is an intriguing novel for anyone familiar with the early fiction of J.M. Coetzee. Nguyen’s debut novel has as its theme the war in Vietnam, which is not surprising given his background and his scholarly work preceding its publication. Interestingly, Coetzee’s first novel, Dusklands(1974) comprised two novellas, the first of which,called “The Vietnam Project”, is also related to the US invasion of Vietnam. Both works offer critical insights into US war-mongering in the post-World War II era. Additionally, Coetzee’s third novel, Waiting for the Barbarians(1980), bears thematic resemblances with both his and Nguyen’s debut novels, as they, in one way or another, are concerned with imperialism’s modus operandi and its continuation through the subjugation, intimidation,and annihilation of collective subjects. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the parallels and overlaps that can be detected among these three novelsthat are germane to the stratagems adopted by an imperialist power to sustain its dominion, legitimize its presence,andjustify brutality. These stratagems mediate the way the imperial force relatesto or conceivesof the other. Of the concepts employed in this article,the following areof particular significance: representation, grievability, and framing.


Problemos ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audronė Žukauskaitė

Straipsnyje analizuojama Jeano Luco Nancy knygoje Corpus suformuluota kūno samprata, nurodoma jos priklausomybė nuo fenomenologinės Emmanuelio Levino ir Maurice’o Merleau-Ponty tradicijos. Straipsnyje taip pat siekiama atskleisti Nancy kūno sampratos radikalumą, jos artimumą tiek Jacques’o Derrida įteisintoms rašymo, paskirstymo erdvėje temoms, tiek Gilles’o Deleuze’o ir Felixo Guattari sukurtai materialistinei kūno koncepcijai. Nancy kūną siekia išlaisvinti nuo reikšmės ir bet kokio organizavimo principo. Tačiau norėdamas paaiškinti, kaip kūnai egzistuoja, jis priverstas išrasti naujas sąvokas: išstatymas, kūnų paskirstymas erdvėje, areališkumas, technē, kūrimas be kūrėjo. Būtent pastaroji sąvoka leidžia Nancy projektą vadinti „krikščionybės dekonstrukcija“; kita vertus, ši sąvoka savotiškai kompromituoja Nancy teorijos radikalumą, atskleisdama bet kurios kūno filosofijos priklausomybę nuo krikščioniškosios tradicijos. Pagrindiniai žodžiai: fenomenologinis suvokimas, prisilietimas, kūnas, technē, krikščionybės dekonstrukcija.Body and Signification in J.-L. Nancy’s CorpusAudronė Žukauskaitė SummaryThe author explores the notion of the body in Jean-Luc Nancy’s Corpus. On the one hand, she shows how Nancy’s project still depends on the phenomenological tradition of Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. On the other hand, she seeks to demonstrate the radical character of this notion and its similarity to Jacques Derrida’s concept of writing and spacing as well as to the materialistic concept of the body elaborated by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. This similarity is based on the assumption that the body could be thought of and described as beyond any meaningful principle of organization. In order to explain how such bodies exist, Nancy is forced to invent new concepts such as spacing out, expeausition, areality, technē, creation without creator. It is exactly the latter concept that enables Derrida to describe Nancy’s project as “deconstruction of Christianity”. This concept also indicates a compromise in Nancy’s radical thinking, revealing that any “philosophy of the body” in Western thought still belongs to the tradition of Christianity.Keywords: phenomenological perception, touching, the body, technē, deconstruction of Christianity.;"> 


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-35
Author(s):  
Nimisha Sinha

This paper explores the presence of a food and consumption related gaze in J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) and In the Heart of the Country (1977). Through the phenomenon of food witnessing, I argue that the food-related gaze is tied with the narrative frame through which torture and violence is witnessed and recorded. The act of watching people eat or other metaphors of food (largely examined throught the idea of 'food witnessing') serve as a way to identify, observe and obliterate the Other.


1988 ◽  
Vol 62 (03) ◽  
pp. 411-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin W. Stearn

Stromatoporoids are the principal framebuilding organisms in the patch reef that is part of the reservoir of the Normandville field. The reef is 10 m thick and 1.5 km2in area and demonstrates that stromatoporoids retained their ability to build reefal edifices into Famennian time despite the biotic crisis at the close of Frasnian time. The fauna is dominated by labechiids but includes three non-labechiid species. The most abundant species isStylostroma sinense(Dong) butLabechia palliseriStearn is also common. Both these species are highly variable and are described in terms of multiple phases that occur in a single skeleton. The other species described areClathrostromacf.C. jukkenseYavorsky,Gerronostromasp. (a columnar species), andStromatoporasp. The fauna belongs in Famennian/Strunian assemblage 2 as defined by Stearn et al. (1988).


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