The Literature Book

322

ENGLISH IS AN

UNFIT MEDIUM

FOR THE TRUTH

OF SOUTH AFRICA

DISGRACE (1999), J. M. COETZEE

postmodern preoccupation with the

language of their production and

the authority of the speaking voice.

Power relations

Coetzee’s novel Disgrace centers on

the downfall of David Lurie, a

professor in classics and modern

languages who is reduced to

teaching “communications.” A cipher

for the lost certainties of whites

from old European stock in the new

South Africa, Lurie finds that

communication fails him. He cannot

engage his students, nor use poetry

to seduce Melanie, a student whom

he effectively rapes during an affair.

After Lurie is plunged into

disgrace and dismissed from his

job, the story shifts to the Eastern

Cape, where his daughter Lucy

runs a small farm. Lurie sees

glimpses of an idealized rural past,

but struggles with the changing

order between white landowners

and their black employees and

neighbors. He fills his time helping

to dispatch neglected animals in a

rural veterinary clinic.

The professor speaks several

European languages, but cannot

engage with Lucy’s neighbor

Petrus. “Pressed into the mould

of English, Petrus’s story would

A

n extraordinary canon

of literature has evolved

in South Africa from a

society in which the black majority

was oppressed for decades by

colonialism and apartheid—a

tyrannical system of segregation.

Writing during and after apartheid

falls very broadly into two camps:

authors such as Nobel prizewinner

Nadine Gordimer produced complex

novels that are a testimony to

history, rooted in social realism

and the politics of their era. In

comparison, J. M. Coetzee appears

almost socially irresponsible in

producing texts that “rival history.”

His stories are characterized by

ambiguity and elusiveness, with a

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

South African literature

BEFORE

1883 Olive Schreiner explores

patriarchal and gender issues

against a colonial backdrop in

The Story of an African Farm.

1948 The best-selling Cr y, t he

Beloved Country by Alan Paton

exposes South Africa’s politics

of oppression to the world.

1963–90 Thousands of books

are banned as “undesirable”

in South Africa.

1991 Writer and activist

Nadine Gordimer is awarded

the Nobel Prize in literature.

AFTER

2000 Writer NoZakes Mda

experiments with a complex

mix of Xhosa history, myth,

and colonial conflict in his

novel The Heart of Redness.

2003 Damon Galgut’s The

Good Doctor picks apart the

promise of political change.

Repentance belongs to

another world, to another

universe of discourse.

Disgrace

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