Kneeling before the fathers’ wand: Violence, eroticism and paternalism in Thomas Pynchon's V. and J.M. Coetzee's Dusklands

Abstract

Summary In their fictional critiques of colonialism/imperialism, both Thomas Pynchon and J.M. Coetzee emphasize the ways in which the colonial powers misrepresent their intent through the conscious misuse of metaphorical language, especially that surrounding the paternal relationship. Pynchon's V. (1966) and Coetzee's Dusklands (1974) address the issue by presenting a number of settings in which such a distortion of language occurs. These disparate sections within the works span more than two hundred years of history, illustrating the longevity of such an approach on the part of European colonizers as well as the growing violence associated with this strategy. This article examines the manner in which Pynchon and Coetzee deal with the subject of colonialism, primarily using Georges Bataille's Erotism: Death and Sensuality (1986) and Keith Booker's Literature and Domination (1993) to derive a critical formula concerning the linkage between the desire for domination, violence and the metaphor surrounding various forms of love. This formula is then used as the filter through which the two aforementioned novels are read, isolating instances in both authors’ writing that demonstrate the specific ways in which colonial powers intentionally blur, or thoroughly obscure, the line between fatherly and sexual love to justify their efforts at political and cultural supremacy.