Courting The Id in Dystopian Fiction: A Freudian Study of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

Abstract

This article explored the moral decadence in post-Apartheid South Africa and examined the injuries that such immorality had on the psyche of the post-apartheid South African woman. It further analysed the necessary shifts in perception and interpretation that depressed South African woman had to grapple with in the face of the immoralities that ensued and identified the new vision of self, art and the world which women invent to liberate themselves from the shackles of morally decay societies. From this perspective, the work anchors on the hypothesis that most post-colonial African societies build immoral societal boundaries which give room to high level of immorality, thus creating avenues for varied philosophies and new modes of survival. Written against the backdrop of Pyscho-Analytic theory, the work concludes that there is the dire need for the moralization and reconstruction of public institutions for mental stability and nation building.