Foe, J.M. Coetzee
Foe. There are so many layers to Foe. As I was musing about it, I became more and more intrigued by the ingenuity of Coetzee. Here are some of my observations:
Firstly, right from the beginning of Foe, we are made conscious of the teller of the tale--the novel begins with quotation marks, signifying the speech, the tale, the story and the presence of its speaker. The speaker is not the invisible narrator nor the trustworthy narrator which we are apt to find in most other novels. It is Susan Barton, recounting her tale to us, and to DeFoe. Reminders of this are interjected throughout the novel, as well, as if to emphasise the self-reflexivity of the text. Such reminders are often found in parentheses:
Pg 8 “(Let me give my description of him all together)”
Pg 9 “(…I have told you of)”
“I have told you how Cruso was dressed; now let me tell you of his habitation”
“…as you shall hear”
Pg 12 “ ‘But let me return to my relation.”
Pg 14 “(I have not yet told you of Cruso’s stove, which was built very neatly of stone)”
Pg 15 “(I shall have more to say of the terraces later)”
Pg 26 “There is more, much more, I could tell you about the life we lived...”
Pg 33 “ ‘Let me tell you of Cruso’s terraces.”
Pg 38 “I must tell you of the death of Cruso, and of our rescue."
Secondly, there are many different levels of story-telling in Foe. This, I believe, reinforces the self-reflexivity of the text. Apart from the most overt level--that of hypertextuality, i.e. Coetzee's re-invention of the 18th century novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe; there are other levels. I list them down to show the multiplicity of stories embedded within Foe:
1. We, the readers, reading this narrative (truth or fiction?) written by Coetzee
2. Susan Barton's story of how she came to be a castaway
3. Cruso's story of how he came to be a castaway (which was, as Susan found, full of confused, incoherent narratives)
4. Friday's story (forever unknown?)
5. Susan Barton's story of Cruso, Friday and her experiences on the island
6. Susan's daughter's (or at least she claims) story
7. DeFoe's story (his "silence", the reason behind the bailiffs' occupation of his premises)
8. DeFoe's story about Susan Barton, Cruso and Friday
9. The narrator in Part IV (who seems to be seeking the verity of stories presented earlier on)
Indeed, it makes us keenly aware of the self-reflexivity of the text, and invites us to ponder on the idea of writing and story-telling; ultimately the issue of the art of writing fiction itself. As Captain Smith remarks, "their (writers') trade is in books, not in truth." Susan also remarks on her lack of the gift of writing such as writers like DeFoe have: "A liveliness is lost in the writing down which must be supplied by art, and I have no art." That made me think of the art of writing, and to what extent is this art an artifice.
This issue is central to Foe. Susan expresses adamance against untruthfulness of any sort in the telling of her tale--"I will not have any lies told...I would rather be the author of my own story than have lies told about me...If I cannot come forward, as author, and swear to the truth of my tale, what will be the worth of it? I might as well have dreamed it in a snug bed in Chichester."
This brings me to Diderot, in the Terdiman reading we did. Some memorably striking comments: "...what happens when real people are treated like characters in a fiction?" (Pg 33, Chap 1) and "These narratives may lie, but they lie about the real, not about the non-existent." (Pg 43, Chap 2).
Does Susan's insistence on truth apply only to autobiography and biography for instance, and not to fiction? After all the definition of fiction is that it is imagined, it is not real; it is fictive. But what I think Coetzee does in Foe and Terdiman does is to highlight the fact that all fiction is a construct, it is a deception, at its most basic level, and when real people are written about in fiction, the level of deception and reconstruction is amplified. Thus the simple dichotomy between object and referent is problematized--language is based on the materiality of bodies ("Language requires bodies" -Terdiman) but in fiction like DeFoe's and Diderot's, the relationship is thwarted.
"Anatomy is destiny"I was reading some work on Helene Cixous (
Hélène Cixous: Writing and Sexual Difference, by Abigail Bray) in preparation for my term paper, and came across something quite interesting. "Anatomy is destiny" is what Freud said in reference to women's sexual difference. It strikes me as a rather dangerous statement to make in contemporary times! *tsk tsk Mr Freud* Such a belief assumes and presumes that the differences (in personality, for eg.) between men and women are based simply on natural, anatomical differences.
Bray went on to cite the Nazi classification of people as an example of this belief in action.
"The subtle and perhaps imaginary anatomical differences between the Aryan and non-Aryan body... was based on a racist ideology which confused anatomical differences with moral differences: Aryan culture was morally superior because Aryan anatomy was biologically superior. "
Indeed! I could not agree with her more. And because of that a whole race was tortured and threatened, a whole world was brought into war.
Moira Gatens sums it all up beautifully:
"It is not anatomy which decides cultural value or status but rather the way in which that anatomy is represented and lived."
Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee
Part Two: David in DisgraceI was musing upon the name David, and it struck me that it has a very plausible association with the Biblical David and his act of adultery with Bathsheba. The difference is that King David was repentant, and turned back to God and asked for forgiveness and thus did not remain in "disgrace". David Lurie, in contrast, is unremorseful in front of the committee, gives the excuse that he was a "servant of Eros", and declares the experience "enriching" moreover. It is only much later that he visits the Issacs and apologises. And unlike King David, he does not rise from his state of "disgrace":
"I am being punished for what happened between myself and your daughter. I am sunk into a state of disgrace from which it will not be easy to lift myself. It is not a punishment I have refused. I do not murmur against it. On the contrary, I am living it out from day to day trying to accept disgrace as my state of being. Is it enough for God, do you think, that I live in disgrace without term?" (David to Mr Issacs, pg 172)
Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee
Part One: focusing on the private Body
I really like this book. I like it because it is so rich - there is such a wealth of meaning embedded in the story. There is so much to muse upon, to think about, to extrapolate. I must confess that so far my interpretation of
Disgrace is as yet, still amateurish. There is more I need to explore. The novel merits re-reading, but as yet I haven't had time to do that.
When I first read
Disgrace, I was drawn to the notion of the rape. That is, Coetzee's narrative ploy of two separate instances in which the body (in particular, the female body) is violated. In David's other relations with women, for instance, Rosalind, Soraya, a colleague, a young girl on the street, Bev Shaw - it seems there was at least a certain level of consent. I did not understand, at that time, the relation to South Africa. Thus the lectures on
Disgrace were a welcoming, mind-opening revelation to how the notion of the body politic can/may (
but should we? as discussed at length in class) be read in Lucy.
I believe that, indeed, in Lucy's words, the very bodily issues of the novel must not be neglected.
"In another time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, at this time, it is not. It is my business, mine alone." (Lucy to David, pg 112)It is the same with David's affair with Melanie Issacs. His private affair with Melanie is (perhaps rightly) brought out into the open, made known, and becomes a scandal, a "public matter".The affair is publicised in the
Argus, reporters throng David after his meeting with the disciplinary board, and the committee tries to convince David to make a public admission that he is wrong.
"...it would help to cool down what has become a very heated situation. Ideally we would all have preferred to resolve this case out of the glare of the media. But that has not been possible. It has received alot of attention, it has acquired overtones that are beyond our control. All eyes are on the university to see how we handle it." (pg 53-54)But we see that despite his public dismissal from the university, the matter is, at its essence, unresolved. David visits the Issacs family in an act of remonstration, which may not be a perfect resolution, but is an attempt at resolution, which is not a
public, but
private act.
The vulnerability of women's bodies, as amplified by the numerous descriptions of women and their bodies as they are seen through David's eyes and eroticised and lusted after, cannot be ignored. Thus, Lucy's decision not to report the rape, to become Petrus' third wife, and to keep the baby represents a attempt to transcend that vulnerability. She transcends her trauma and rises up in strength. Thus, unlike David, who falls from a state of grace, that is, into
disgrace, Lucy ascends into grace, and is, as Dr Yeo has said, a tragic heroine. As we have discussed in class, Lucy stands as a rather puzzling, unfathomable character; but there is no doubt that she is somewhat superior. Her marginality does not make her inferior in the eyes of the reader.
Therefore, the very private, bodily notion of the rape, and the violation of the female body, must not be discounted in the light of other ways in which to read the text. Our preoccupation with the parallel of the new South Africa body politic can sometimes overshadow this.
and the Word became flesh...
Today in class someone shared about her topic for her term paper proposal, that of the representation of the body in the Bible. I thought it was pretty interesting. And Dr Yeo shared how she felt there was an incongruity in the manner in which the Christian faith views the image of the body. One, the body as corruptible, the site of earthly desires, the flesh which requires purgation, the body which must, necessarily, be put to death:
"I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish...
Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness...
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control...
And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit."
Ephesians 5:16-24Two, the irony that the ultimate redemption was Christ, but it was a bodily sacrifice, and the Christian faith hinges upon the resurrection of Christ's corporeal body. God in flesh was the redeeming sacrifice. Thus Dr Yeo asserted that there was a peculiar incongruity in how the body is meant to be viewed. Is it to be viewed as evil, sinful, and the source and site of transgression; or to be elevated as the Lamb that was slain for the forgiveness of sins?
I believe this incongruity can be quite simply resolved, at least, in my opinion. Christ's redeeming work and his sacrifice on the cross had to be corporeal, borne of the flesh, simply because it was the body and its sinfulness which had to be crucified. The transgressions had to be purged at their source. The ultimate resurrection of Jesus could be viewed not as incongrous, but a celebration, not of the slain body, martyred for sins, but a celebration of the exact converse: Christ's power over death, over mortality, over the body. Viewed in this light, it might be easier to read the Communion not as a remembrance of Jesus' body and blood per se, but as a remembrance of Him, of His sacrifice and salvation. Even though Dr Yeo mentioned that the Protestants view the bread and wine as symbolic, but the Catholics take them more literally - both are not symbolic simply of His body and blood which was shed and which suffered for our sins. Rather they are meant to point ultimately to the sacrifice which was performed through the body and the blood, because it was only in flesh and body that the sins of the world could be taken upon. The shoulders which bore the sins of the world had to be of man, for man, because of man.
That is why the Protestants' image of Christ is never that of Him nailed to the cross, shown in suffering; but only the cross itself, because He has overcome death, and it is not His suffering we are asked to focus on, but the salvation and His triumph over death and the body i.e. His resurrection, which is of importance.
Thus, we do not mourn his death, but celebrate His life; we do not grieve the body which was sacrificed, but rejoice in His triumph; and we remember not the absence of life (i.e. His death), but the fullness of life in His resurrection which is not bodily, not corporeal, but supernatural.
In the Penal ColonyDid you know that Kafka's
In the Penal Colony has actually been adapted and produced by renowned composer Philip Glass? I Google-ed it and was surprised to find that Glass has adapted it into a chamber opera libretto! Wow. It's a fairly recent composition - written in 2000. I think it would certainly be interesting to get my hands on a copy of it. :)
Ok, point of interest aside, let me elaborate on my thoughts on
In the Penal Colony.
I was pondering over the fact that
the machine ultimately fails. What does it imply? It is first described as working fine except for a noisy creaking sound; however in the final execution, with its most ardent 'devotee' under its subjection, the machine breaks down. As the explorer remarked, "the machine was obviously going to pieces; its silent working was a delusion". (Pg 165) The machine steadily breaks down - the cogwheels fall off, the Harrow does not write but jab repeatedly, the Bed does not turn the body over, the water jets fail to function, and the usual torture process is speeded up: "But at that moment the Harrow rose with the body spitted on it and moved to the side, as it usually did only when the twelfth hour had come." Finally the body does not, in the officer's own words, "fall...into the pit with an incomprehensibly gentle wafting motion" (Pg 154), but remains hanging over the pit, streaming with blood.
I think that Kafka may be trying to demonstrate how the ultimate failure of the machine, which is an "agency" (to borrow Scarry's terminology) of torture and implied power, ironises the high rhetoric and devotion of the officer to his cruel torture apparatus. Similarly, the undecipherable inscriptions which are 'written' on the prisoner's body can be viewed as parallel to, or even symbolic of the dubious means by which the torture is justified, as well as the dubious or questionable culpability of the condemned man. Kafka is thus, heavily ironic. Moreover the inscription, as claimed by the officer, is meant to read "Be Just" - while this problematises and questions, on one hand, the fairness of the justice and judgement levied on the condemned man, I also see a further irony: the problematising of what many readers and the explorer feel is only "just" for the officer to do - his ultimate suicide.
"If the judicial procedure which the officer cherished were really so near its end...then the officer was doing the right thing; in his place the explorer would not have acted otherwise." (Pg 163)
However, in the final moments, the explorer feels a degree of sympathy and compassion for the officer - "he had a feeling that he must now stand by the officer, since the officer was no longer able to look after himself." (Pg 165) He is also the one who gets the condemned man and the soldier to assist him in pushing the corpse into the pit. Was this what the officer deserved? Throughout the story, we as readers are horrified and even filled with disgust at the coolness of tone which the officer adopts, his clinicality and pride in such cruel and morbid torture. However, at the end, Kafka seems to push our hardened hearts towards a certain degree of sympathy for the officer. The description of his suffered and maimed body moves us:
"And here, almost against his will, he had to look at the face of the corpse. It was as it had been in life; no sign was visible of the promised redemption; what the others had found in the machine the officer had not found; ... through the forehead went the point of the great iron spike."
Perhaps Kafka may be trying to convey the idea that no torture can ever "be just".
