Never one to stray from controversy, I would like to offer up the idea of the author of Disgrace being a racist and what's more, that David Lurie's views of black south African people in the book are actually his own: "Coetzee, in refusing to engage in public discussions of his work, does not make his life, or the lives of his interested readers, any easier. His decision to shun the debates he provokes is usually met with suspicion" ( Makhaya). One could argue that the author's aversion to talking about his books in a public forum is an artist's right. Perhaps he would rather have readers decide for themselves what underlying themes or even messages his works hold. Still, I would argue that due to the incredibly sensitive topics he writes about, not only should he openly talk about his writing, but he actually has a responsibility to talk about his writing.
The character of David Lurie has strong opinions about the native people of South Africa: "He speaks Italian, he speaks French, but Italian and French will not save him here in darkest Africa. He is helpless [...] a missionary in cassock and topi waiting with clasped hands and upcast eyes while the savages jaw away in their own lingo preparatory to plunging him into their boiling cauldron. Mission work: what has it left behind, that huge enterprise of upliftment. Nothing that he can see" (95). Lurie's view of Africa and its natives is unusually similar to that of Marlowe in Heart of Darkness. In fact, I find it fascinating that such a colonial passage was written merely ten years ago. David Lurie holds an incredibly bourgeois opinion of "darkest Africa," a term which even I, a white American find offensive. The Africa Coetzee describes does not come across as dark or wild and as despicable and macabre as Lucy's rape is, this and atrocities similar to it would not have happened but for the degradation and humiliation the whites subjected the native Africans to for decades. In Disgrace, David Lurie rightfully tries to bring the men who violated his daughter to some kind of justice, however, not once does he stop to consider why these men may have acted in such a reprehensible manner, which means neither does Coetzee. Nothing could or should explain away their actions or provide them with any type of diplomacy, especially not Lucy's absurd reasoning for her rape as a sort of reparation act. David Lurie should have sought counseling for his daughter because she had clearly lost her grasp on reality and the true meaning of justice. Instead, he allows her to linger in the deepest of depressions, selling her self-respect and soul to Petrus for "protection."
Whether or not Coetzee is truly racist can be debated, however, if the characters he has created reflect even an inlking of his own beliefs and/or morals, then he is just as troubled as the people in Disgrace. If we are to view him as a proponent of anti-racism and a credit to his nation then why did he move away and become a citizen of Australia? Chinua Achebe once wrote an essay about the racism within Conrad's Heart of Darkness. One of his problems with it was the narrator's description of Africa as being this stygian, claustrophobic world unto itself. I find it interesting, and possibly telling, that this is exactly how Coetzee's narrator feels about Africa as well.
http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/the-trouble-with-jm-coetzee/
The character of David Lurie has strong opinions about the native people of South Africa: "He speaks Italian, he speaks French, but Italian and French will not save him here in darkest Africa. He is helpless [...] a missionary in cassock and topi waiting with clasped hands and upcast eyes while the savages jaw away in their own lingo preparatory to plunging him into their boiling cauldron. Mission work: what has it left behind, that huge enterprise of upliftment. Nothing that he can see" (95). Lurie's view of Africa and its natives is unusually similar to that of Marlowe in Heart of Darkness. In fact, I find it fascinating that such a colonial passage was written merely ten years ago. David Lurie holds an incredibly bourgeois opinion of "darkest Africa," a term which even I, a white American find offensive. The Africa Coetzee describes does not come across as dark or wild and as despicable and macabre as Lucy's rape is, this and atrocities similar to it would not have happened but for the degradation and humiliation the whites subjected the native Africans to for decades. In Disgrace, David Lurie rightfully tries to bring the men who violated his daughter to some kind of justice, however, not once does he stop to consider why these men may have acted in such a reprehensible manner, which means neither does Coetzee. Nothing could or should explain away their actions or provide them with any type of diplomacy, especially not Lucy's absurd reasoning for her rape as a sort of reparation act. David Lurie should have sought counseling for his daughter because she had clearly lost her grasp on reality and the true meaning of justice. Instead, he allows her to linger in the deepest of depressions, selling her self-respect and soul to Petrus for "protection."
Whether or not Coetzee is truly racist can be debated, however, if the characters he has created reflect even an inlking of his own beliefs and/or morals, then he is just as troubled as the people in Disgrace. If we are to view him as a proponent of anti-racism and a credit to his nation then why did he move away and become a citizen of Australia? Chinua Achebe once wrote an essay about the racism within Conrad's Heart of Darkness. One of his problems with it was the narrator's description of Africa as being this stygian, claustrophobic world unto itself. I find it interesting, and possibly telling, that this is exactly how Coetzee's narrator feels about Africa as well.
http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/the-trouble-with-jm-coetzee/
I'm not sure if I would call J.M. Coetzee a racist yet, but your blog post and the website you included definitely have good points. I never paid enough attention to Lurie's degrading thoughts and comments towards Petrus, especially when he said that Lucy marrying Petrus would be humiliating. These along with other comments that Lurie said in the novel definitely points out that he had a prejudiced attitude towards black South Africans.
ReplyDeleteBro the narrator doesn't feel anything. The narrative is focalized on David Lurie and we experience his thoughts and feelings in the narration, it's called Free Indirect Discourse, a literary device developed by Jane Austen. The narrator and Lurie himself both say terrible things, some racist, some sexist, most of them abhorrent rationalizations of his raping Melanie Isaacs or his sexual interest in his own daughter (and you might be hard pressed to argue that Coetzee is also fetishizing incest in the novel). David Lurie is an allegorical figure for the white patriarchy in South Africa; as an educated older white male Lurie is essentially an alpha dog (you'll recall dogs are the essential symbol in the book) using his position of power to take what he wants while using Romantic literature and art, a western movement, to delude himself about what he's doing (colonialism, a western political movement which coincided with the Romantic movement). After someone finally calls him on his shit, i.e. Mr. Isaacs comes to save his daughter and get the sonofabitch fired, David is actually offered some protection by the patriarchy, his fellow males at the university offer him sympathy, but refuses to take it and quits his job because the only way to keep it would be to admit that he was wrong and go into counseling. It is only after the home invasion at the farm that Lurie's delusions are broken and he does actually begin to change. Bit by bit he lets go of his old alpha male persona and becomes more humane toward animals, more fatherly to his daughter and eventually cares less about Petrus' race and more about the fact that he is protecting Lucy's rapist. Petrus' rise to power over David Lurie represents an ironic reversal of South African colonization and the rise of the new patriarchy-- South Africa is not in a good place you guys. To this day any time a group tries to bring up the obscenely high rates of sexual violence in SA, they are accused of racism. One particularly good paper by Helen Moffett argues that the patriarchy which used to use apartheid to keep down blacks is now using sexual assault to keep down women and protect their rule, a point which greatly resembles Lucy's situation at the end of the novel, her powerlessness against the patriarchy, exactly the same as Melanie's powerlessness, exactly the same as David's powerlessness when he's invited into the Isaacs home at the climax of the novel when he is finally confronted with the reality that he used his position of power to force Melanie into a sexual relationship and ask forgiveness. At the end of the novel he finally changes, symbolically kills the lame old remnant of his alpha-dog self. Anyway, it's an allegory. Rape and colonialism are compared b/c their both crimes of power and applied force, and often their slow and the perpetrators are heavily deluded about what they're doing. It's a fucking beautiful book, man and one about a racist, sexist rapist on his journey to redemption. Also it's really not ever fair to take a character's words and actions out of context and assume they represent the author's personality. That's the same ridiculous argument people use to call Mark Twain a racist and that shit is also frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI doubt you understand the intricacies of living in a place like the Eastern Cape in South Africa. Here African norms and values are very different to your bubble of Judeo-Christian ethical heritage. Added to this is the fact that David Lurie is not the narrator.But I suspect that it's tempting, even vindicating for borgeois white America to indict middle-aged white men in South Africa, every time they raise a disaffected voice in the wilderness. And if only for their being white men, who you may immediately picture as having turned a blind eye to the wrongs of apartheid. But even if that's the case apathy towards the rape or attack of any human, white or black, is a crime.
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