From before to after – bridging the gap: photography, art and the state in J.M. Coetzee’s late fiction

Abstract

ABSTRACT Coetzee’s early interest in photography provides the stimulus for this paper, which argues that photography serves as a useful gateway into his novel-writing, with a particular focus on his before-and-after pairing of school photographs. The paper traces a line between this early interest and themes of individual resistance to co-optation by the state that would later come to define Coetzee’s fictional work. It contends that his experimentation with ‘before-and-after’ technique in photography taught him valuable lessons that would later be used to disassemble narratives that compel individuals to conform to societal expectations. The paper includes a detailed examination of the way that Coetzee challenges the social structures of both family and the school in the ‘Jesus’ trilogy, developing methods which arguably have their origin in the early photography, techniques of juxtaposition, seriality and montage. The thesis is that ‘photographic thinking’ has remained an influential feature of Coetzee’s work throughout his writing career, albeit with significant changes that are discussed here.