Abstract
ABSTRACTThis article examines photographic ekphrasis in the first novella of J. M. Coetzee’s Dusklands (1974)—the narrative of Eugene Dawn—exploring how the properties and technical processes of photography and film are inscribed in the novel’s prose as a response to the media dialogues and violent imagery about the war in Vietnam that Coetzee experienced while living in America. The first section of analysis considers how a focus on the negative reportage of this period suggests that Coetzee remained haunted by these narratives upon returning to South Africa. The second part explores how Dawn’s contact with his private collection of photographs triggers a mental breakdown that leads him to assault his son. He comes to resemble the figures from his photographic collection and is ultimately inserted into the photographic realm symbolically during a dramatic standoff with the police, which is staged to resemble the act of taking a photograph.
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