The intersection of postmodern, postcolonial and feminist discourse in J.M. Coetzee'sFoe

Abstract

Summary This paper is a condensed version of the final chapter of The Novels of J.M. Coetzee: Lacanian Allegories. It was to have been presented at the seminar on Foe in March 1988, prior to the publication of the book in July 1988. It offers a reading of the novel, Foe, as allegory, with the figure of Susan Barton representing certain positions in feminist discourse, Cruso representing postcolonial discourse from the position of the colonizer, and Friday's muteness representing the impossibility of a pure, original discourse on the part of the colonized. Feminist, postcolonial and postmodern discourses have in common the problem of speaking as Other, of representing the self as Other to various dominant discourses. In Foe Coetzee would appear to borrow strategies for figuring radical Otherness from both feminist and postcolonial discourse, while exploring the contradictions inherent in these strategies. Postmodernism offers strategies of intervention and evasion necessary to white South African writers, ...