False Reality and Frontier Myth in Waiting For Barbarians and The Tartar Steppe

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In borderlands where two very different cultures clash, a distinction appears between “the civilised'' and “the uncivilised”. Through this separation, a third space of interaction emerges between two opposing components, in which one dominates over the other. The dominant frontier settlers’ culture always fears the threat coming from the ''barbaric'' exterior behind this space, anticipating a danger to its own existence. Consequently, the mission of the frontier settlers becomes establishing a liberated territory for the preservation of civilisation. Such encounters between “the civilised” and “the uncivilised” produce myths integrated to the dominant culture, such in the old Western narratives between a courageous cowboy and a treacherous Indian, in which one side is glorified while the other is undermined. The space created within this area becomes open to a variety of different narratives, often demonising the inferior “othered” subject. The representation of the othered subject is embedded into the very culture that produces them, as a result, the study of this representation offers new insights about how such ideas are formed. In this paper, I aim to analyse the Frontier Myth as developed by Richard Slotkin and Frontier Orientalism as proposed by Andre Gingrich in terms of the creation of a liberated territory between two opposing cultures and the recurring myths inherent to imperialist culture, in J.M.Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Dino Buzzati’s The Tartar Steppe. I will further analyse the concept of propaganda and underline how it works in effecting the creation of false realities in the aforementioned novels in colonial settings. My aim is to combine Slotkin’s and Gingrich’s theories and to apply these to the selected works by highlighting the role of propaganda in the creation of a false reality.