100 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
contextual circumstances are also different in that, unlike in Waiting
for the Barbarians , with its atemporal mise-en-sc è ne , Disgrace is set in
the very particular sociopolitical context of post-Apartheid South
Africa. However, in spite of this more conspicuous connection
with the contemporary, Disgrace appears to be less concerned than
Waiting for the Barbarians with exploring the dynamics of human
power relations within society. Indeed, Disgrace is more focused on
interrogating power relations across species—between humans and
animals. Before coming to the relationships that Lurie develops with
animals and the ramifications they present for cosmopolitan ethics,
it is first necessary to expand upon the characterization of the pro-
tagonist himself.
A cursory comparative reading of the two novels reveals some sub-
stantial similarities in the personalities of Lurie and the Magistrate.
Unlike the characters in many of Coetzee’s other works, both are
aging bachelors with predatory sexual habits. However, both also
share a caustic and jaded self-deprecating sense of humor that appears
somehow to lighten the guilt they feel for their ethical contradictions.
Again, these traits serve to problematize the empathic process by plac-
ing obstacles in the way of the reader’s empathy. Any empathy that is
established is therefore of a far more critical and self-reflexive nature.
In the case of the Magistrate, a first-person voice relates—in an exag-
geratedly penitent tone—some of the trials of his increasingly erratic
virility: “When I was young the mere smell of a woman would arouse
me; now it is evidently only the sweetest, the youngest, the newest
who have that power. One of these days it will be little boys (p. 49).”
In Disgrace , the narrator employs a similarly self-indulgent and deca-
dent tone that simultaneously exposes the character’s depravity while
brazenly calling for the reader’s sympathy:
For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, [... Lurie] has, to his mind,
solved the problem of sex rather well. On Thursday afternoons he drives
to Green Point. [... ] Waiting for him at the door of No. 113 is Soraya.
He goes straight through to the bedroom, which is pleasant-smelling
and softly lit, and undresses. (p. 1)This suggestion that sex is a “problem” is, of course, not entirely
serious—the deadpan tone used for discussing something so