A Blind Empire and the One Just Man

           This week I read Waiting for the Barbarians and while I found the violence a bit unsettling, I enjoyed the book nevertheless. I am always interested in the way J. M. Coetzee goes about making his character more believably human by putting so much attention into their physicality and sexuality. However, what really caught my eye from the start of this novel was Coetzee's repeated use of the idea of blindness, whether artificial, accidental or metaphorical. In the beginning of the novel the image of blindness we get is that of Colonel Joll and his "two little discs of glass" (Waiting for the Barbarians, pg.1) covering his eyes and the magistrate wondering if he is blind. This image is significant for two reasons. First, it establishes the idea that Colonel Joll has a questionable ability to see things because his eyes are covered, and second it demonstrates the fact that the magistrate and Colonel Joll are from different worlds.

            We can see these ideas develop through out the novel. For example, not much further into the chapter a parallel is drawn between the first young prisoner we see and the Magistrate. The magistrate states, "He has probably never seen anything like it before...I mean the eyeglasses. He must think you are a blind man." (Waiting for the Barbarians, pg. 3) On one level this establishes a connection between the young "barbarian" and the magistrate because they both share a certain distance from the Empire and its modernity, which is exactly what Colonel Joll represents. Despite the fact that these are not the words of young prisoner, Joll is being set apart again from the world of the frontier town. There are many soldiers that are stationed there, but no one quite like Colonel Joll. While many soldiers are stationed there they grow accustomed to the ways of the town, Joll does not. Also, we are reminded that Colonel Joll's ability to see is being put into question, that is not his physical ability to see, but his ability to understand, analyze things and view them past the Empire colored lenses he wears. The Magistrate spends much of his time trying to make Colonel Joll and the envoys of the Empire understand that they are going about things the wrong way, but often he finds that they cannot be reasoned with. Their blindness therefore, becomes a handicap to their perception of the situation around them, which will ultimately lead to the erroneous military decision that devastates their armed forces as well as their town. However, it has to be understood that their blindness in no way serves as an excuse for their actions. The fact that Joll and Mandel  voluntarily shield themselves against any reasoning or explanations presents the audience with an understanding that they do not wish see things a different way, much in the same way that the Empire wishes to do things its way without yielding to the demands of anybody else. The Magistrate describes Colonel Joll's glasses as "dark shields hiding healthy eyes" (Waiting for the Barbarians, pg.5) putting forth the fact that not only does Joll shield himself from what is truly going on around him, but hiding, much the same way the Magistrate tries to hide from the truth behind their interrogation methods at the beginning of the novel.

            The ability to see, to experience things is very important in the novel because really the only person who sees the barbarians is the Magistrate, to everyone else they are only dark shadows in the distance. One cannot understand something that one never sees or experiences and the Empire's blindness to this as embodied by Joll is a comment on this idea. More over it is also a comment on the way the Barbarians become an abstract concept to fear, and the way in which the Empire itself has become an abstract concept beyond the people of the frontier towns who are suppose to be ruled by it.

(EDITED: September 27, 2011 12:29 to be double spaced)

Reflections

            The concept I touched on in my previous posts hinted at the idea of duality in Dusklands, but I did not delve into this as much as I could have mostly because it was something that was brought to my attention by someone else. The idea of a battle between the bodily existence and the conceptual existence is really one of the things that I was trying to get at. The characters can live out their existence and believe in the concept of the colonizer, but does that mean they can embody it? Not necessarily, as is shown by the fact that the bodily existence of both Jacobus and Eugene suffers from their inability to see the concept of the colonizer as what it is, a concept that has been constructed by not just someone, but several people, something inorganic, which they mean to accept as tangible and organic. This concept cannot be lived out because things are simply not as black and white as they might have seem for Jacobus and Eugene. They want to subscribe to the idea of difference, trying to determine who they are based off what they are not. However, both characters find that they have more in common with the other than they had initially thought. The "other," is not quite the other, and can share many things in common with the self. It is like looking at a mirror, thinking that the face that looks back at you is different from you, only to realize that what you have been looking at all along has been your own self. For example, Jacobus has to begin to rethink his ideas of the Namaqua when he is faced with the fact they are proud people, like him. Therefore, he finds himself in the position of having to account for this similarity, which is contrary to what he had known. While acknowledging this fact, that they possess will, unlike his slaves, he has to explicate the difference by subjecting them again to the narrative of the colonizer, without conceding the fact that this same narrative has begun to fail him. Similarly, Eugene tries to explain his failure at work and his marriage by coming to the idea that he is a misunderstood genius. The oppressors then can be seen as being brutalized by their own narrative, in their attempts to oppress others. Their physical bodies must endure the pain that their egos cannot endure when their idea of the colonizer/colonized relationship is subverted. Dusklands does not simply place all answers in one's lap. One has to dig through the text to realize that even though these two characters are horrible, and although it may seem like there is no punishment administered, there is no worse punishment for them than being trapped in their crumbling ideals, because they have seen the light between the cracks of their broken mirror, but they cannot bring themselves to accept what is beyond it.

(Haiti Slave uprising, the slaves hang  old masters)

(EDITED: September 27, 2011 12:31 to be double spaced)

A Prison of Flesh

The reading  for this week was Coetzee's Dusklands, of course I went in not really knowing what to expect and with only a vague idea that I would be dealing with some concepts of colonialism. When I finished the book I realized there were many things that troubled me, but one thing that really caught my eye was the juxtaposition between the reactions of the mind versus those of the body under some kind of intense pressure, or stress factor. This post is dedicated to this idea.

            In J. M. Coetzee's novel Dusklands, a connection arises between the loss of control of the character's bodies and minds, and the world that affects them. Although the book is divided into two stories, both of the main characters, Eugene Dawn and Jacobus Coetzee, exhibit a struggle for power. The concept of colonialism is embodied both by means of individual struggles and through their fight to control their bodies and impulses. When their loss of control reaches a critical point, it becomes mirrored in the way that they are suddenly overtaken by illness.

            For Eugene it is a mental illness which epitomizes his inability to deal with losing power in his life. Eugene means to be a conquering force both in his work place and at home but fails to have any real power over his superior, Coetzee, or his wife, and thus Eugene begins a battle over the control of his mind that threatens the control he exerts over his body. Eugene tells us from the beginning that he is “intense” but “only because (his) will is concentrated on subduing spasms in the various parts of (his) body.” (Dusklands, pg. 5) By this we are able to learn that Eugene prizes the ability to control his body and that he is terrified to lose that control. Similarly when he demonstrates his fear of losing control over the Vietnam Project to his superior, Coetzee, he comments on his inability to control the curling of his toes while trying helplessly to conceal it. Another instance in which this association occurs is when he mentions his wife, Eugene states: “I am also unable to rid myself of the habit of stroking my face. Charlotte disapproves of this tic, which she says betokens anxiety.” (Dusklands, pg. 5) As we move through the novel it becomes evident that Eugene is so concerned with keeping his poise that the concern becomes externalized in the form of tics. The spams that Eugene suffers to control, are not only signs of a growing anxiety that eventually drives him over the edge, they also reflect his worries over the loss of control over the creation of the Vietnam Project. Eugene believes that he is misunderstood by everyone; both his superiors who he believes do not understand his work, and by his wife who both does not approve of his work and fails to provide for him a physical and mental release for his stress. He states, “I am only finding a franker way to touch my own centers of power than through the unsatisfying genital connection.” (Dusklands, pg. 10) Although he fails to mention creativity directly, one can gather that his power is his creative genius, and that not being able to assert himself as man, to his wife, he means to prove he is indeed “the young-bull” (Dusklands, pg. 5) by means of his written work to everyone else. Still, Eugene fails to do either, allowing the situation to culminate in the stabbing of his son, where Eugene loses not only control of his body, but of his mind. 

            In the second part of the book, Jacobus Coetzee, attempts to appear as a grand explorer set out to conquer the wild Africa that is yet to tamed. He however, finds that taming the wild is much more difficult than he would have expected. Coetzee is unable to assert his dominance over the Namaqua, and his inability to control them as wild people, as untamed savages, is resounded in the way he suddenly falls ill and is unable to take care of himself and his expedition. The cause of his illness, while unknown, is hinted to stem from guilt and fright at the inability to maintain control over the chaos he has ensued. Before his sickness worsens, he maintains lucidity long enough to recognize that he “had fallen into the hands of callous thieves...whose hospitality I had only yesterday insulted” (Dusklands, pg. 76) When Coetzee perceives danger close by, he becomes increasingly ill. For example, after he and his men leave the Namaqua following an incident with the village people, he “(has) bad dreams” and wakes up “shivering and light-headed.” ( Dusklands, pg. 74) As the proximity of the village people increases so does too Coetzee's sickness. Upon noticing “dark little figures following” Coetzee evacuates his “bowels in a furious gush” ( Dusklands, pg. 74) an action that will become involuntary once Coetzee feels he has lost total control over his men and the situation. Unlike Eugene however, Coetzee is able to regain his consciousness safely without harming himself or anyone. However, this is not to say that Coetzee avoids any after effects of his illness. Upon recovering Coetzee discovers an “eruption...forming on (his) left buttock.” (Dusklands, pg. 82) This eruption symbolizes a sort of battle wound obtained in the fight against the Namaqua. However, said wound is meant to be unheroic, not a scar that will remind him of a valiant defeat, but rather something that made him the object of ridicule, and that brought him down from his power position of “tamer of the wild”( Dusklands, pg. 78)  to simply a cowering incontinent animal.

An Introduction to Coetzee and Me

My name is Karla and I am setting up this blog in hopes of better appreciating the issues that J. M. Coetzee presents in his novels. The first time I read his work was in an undergraduate class and it made me realize that I had to leave a certain comfort zone to truly understand the issues he dealt with in Disgrace.

At twenty I had begun to finally think of myself as an adult only to realize that my view on life was completely distorted, that I led a sheltered life and had never really given thought to many of the things that Coetzee dealt with in his book. One of the issues he dealt with in his novel was the sexuality of the mature man, and this was as one would say colloquially "thrown in my face." It shattered the image I have had of male authority figures up to that point. The main character's disastrous relationship with females made me lose a little more hope in that illusive concept that we call love, and made me question the ties that bind a daughter and a father. Moreover, I realized that racial violence and discrimination were very much still around today, and that without realizing in some way I had made it part of my everyday life. It was hard to come to terms with the fact that I had found even the faintest glimmer of racism in my self while I had been constantly asking for equality.

I am hoping that Coetzee will push my limits again, help me discover new things about literature as well as myself, and I hope to take in as much of what he has to say and incorporate it into my own creative writing.
For now I will leave you my audience with a smile on your face, hopefully. Please enjoy Makmende!

(EDITED: September 27, 2011 12:33 to be double spaced)