92 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
On being asked by the Magistrate how he knows that his use of tor-
ture is not forcing false confessions, he replies, “There is a certain
tone [... that] enters the voice of a man who is telling the truth”
(p. 5). “First,” he explains, “I get lies [... ] then pressure, then more
lies, then more pressure, then the break, then more pressure, then
the truth. That is how you get the truth” (p. 5). Following a similar
pattern, the Magistrate attempts to decipher an arbitrary “truth” of
the “barbarian” woman’s body: “It has been growing more and more
clear to me that until the marks on this girl’s body are deciphered
and understood I cannot let go of her” (p. 33). During his verbal
exchanges with the woman, he also states that he “ought to be fill-
ing her with the truth,” rather than trying to bring to the surface
a consciousness that is latent in her mind (the “maieutic” method)
(p. 44). However, when he finally returns the “barbarian girl” to
her people, the character receives an indication that a semantic gap
may exist between her idea of truth and his own. Urging the lat-
ter, “Tell them your story. Tell them the truth,” her only response
is a vaguely contemptuous “little smile” and the ambiguous ques-
tion: “You really want me to tell them the truth?” (p. 77). Indeed,
that there is a large gap between the Magistrate’s quixotic views of
events and the woman’s own is confirmed later in the novel when a
cook informs him that he “made her very unhappy” and that “some-
times she would cry and cry and cry” (p. 166). Thus, although the
Magistrate appears reluctant to wield authority in an oppressive sys-
tem that he reviles, he nonetheless seems helpless in thwarting its
epistemological influences.
Such a scenario is echoed in Life & Times of Michael K, when
the authorities order the sympathetic and liberally inclined doctor
to ascertain “the truth” of K’s story. As with the Magistrate and,
indeed, Colonel Joll, the doctor’s embeddedness within a highly dis-
ciplinary society (one that insists on a singular notion of “truth”)
appears to exert an almost irrepressible influence on his attitude and
behavior. Mirroring Joll’s demands to hear “the truth” in the torture
chamber, the doctor insists that K “tell the truth!” and reduce his
experiences to a single narrative, compatible with the logic used by
the authorities (p. 139). Although genuinely concerned for K’s well-
being, he begins to deploy t he la ng ua ge a nd rea son of a n interrogator