“I see what I have been dreading”:Witnessing Food and Violence in Waiting for the Barbarians and In the Heart of the Country

Abstract

This paper explores the presence of a food and consumption related gaze in J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) and In the Heart of the Country (1977). Through the phenomenon of food witnessing, I argue that the food-related gaze is tied with the narrative frame through which torture and violence is witnessed and recorded. The act of watching people eat or other metaphors of food (largely examined throught the idea of 'food witnessing') serve as a way to identify, observe and obliterate the Other.