Racial Identity in Post-Apartheid South Africa: J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

Abstract

J.M. Coetzee is a South African novelist, critic and an active translator of Dutch and Afrikaans literature. His novels are conspicuous for their well- crafted composition, pregnant dialogues and analytical brilliance. Coetzee’s earlier novels question the apartheid regime, while his later works offer an apocalyptic vision of post- apartheid South Africa. His major works include Disgrace, Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, Boyhood, Age of Iron and The Childhood of Jesus. In 1999, Coetzee has been the recipient of numerous awards throughout his career, although he has a reputation for avoiding award ceremonies. Coetzee became the first author to be twice awarded the Booker Prize, winning it as second time for Disgrace which portrays the post-apartheid society. Coetzee went on to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003 for his entire body of works. During the years of apartheid, he was at the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement among writers. Scholar Isadore Dalia labelled J.M Coetzee as one of the most distinguished white writers with an anti-apartheid sentiment. Coetzee’s earlier novels question the apartheid regime, while his later works offer an apocalyptic vision of post- apartheid South Africa. Disgrace can be analyzed as a representative work of the new south Africa where the social problems relating binary oppositions such as black- white, white- immigrant, powerless- powerful, are stressed. This paper attempts to show through the protagonist, David Lurie, that the way to adapt to the changes in the country is to make a fresh start, a way to adapt to the new times, where no ideas of the old are retained. Frantz Fanon’s concepts within the field of post colonialism which he articulated in Black Skin, White Masks (1967) and The Wretched of the Earth (1963) have much relevance in Disgrace. The objective of this paper is to stretch his new ideas in a new direction by applying his theories on nation and culture onto a white subject Lurie, a white native South African. In the light of Fanon’s text, The Wretched of the Earth it can be argued that following the revolutionary political changes in South Africa in 1994, the former colonizer can be seen in the same way as the colonized usually is: a powerless native, regardless of racial identity.