J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace

"He speaks Italian, he speaks French, but Italian and French will not save him here in darkest Africa. He is helpless, an Aunt Sally, a figure from a cartoon, a missionary in cassock and topi waiting with clasped hands and upcast eyes while the savages jaw away in their own lingo preparatory to plunging him into their boiling cauldron. Mission work: what has it left behind, that huge enterprise of enlightenment? Nothing that he can see."

            J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace is quite the read. Like previous novels, such as Waiting for the Barbarians, our protagonist, a college professor in Cape Town who falls in disgrace after an affair with a student gets out, like the civil magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians, becomes reduced to some of the most dehumanizing, alienating experiences one could face while simultaneously learning more about themselves and the human condition. Unlike the other novel, Disgrace is explicitly South Africa, and based on post-apartheid South Africa’s still horrid race relations. In addition, Coetzee’s novel serves as commentary on the post-apartheid state’s notorious crime rate, frequency of rape, and violence by poor black South Africans against white farmers. The ineptitude and corruption of the South African police, black rage and thugs from the still dispossessed, white racism and liberalism, sexism, animal rights, and any hope for reconciliation do not escape the novel unscathed. Indeed, the novel, published in 1999, expresses the sentiments of a white South African author disillusioned with his nation, yet still critical of white nationalist, right-wing racism. 

Nevertheless, Coetzee faced criticism and, according to some critics, his novel, focused entirely on the white college professor and his lesbian daughter, ignored the blacks’ humanity, who are portrayed as rapists, thugs, animals, savages, conniving, and suspicious. One must be skeptical of such claims regarding the author himself, whose intentions, based on his anti-apartheid stance in the past, as well as novels critical of imperialism and racism, merely represented the opinions of many white South Africans. Ettinger, the German farmer, for instance, is one of a dying breed since he believes that with his guns and barbed wire he can protect himself from the savage blacks in Eastern Cape. Other white farmers, due to the danger of assault and robbery, have already given up farming for the safety of gated communities in cities or fleeing South Africa altogether, something Coetzee himself also did by emigrating to Australia. Other white racists include the narrator himself, whose entire literary passion is based on European Romantic poetry and a conspicuous lack of interest or perhaps apathy regarding South African blacks, literary or otherwise. Indeed, the author also expresses opposition to what he terms “redistribution” or his daughter Lucy’s silence about her rape as a manifestation of white guilt over the history of apartheid and white oppression of the black majority. 

Thus, the college professor, who in some ways could be read as Coetzee, who taught at the University of Cape Town, is clearly racist and skeptical about forced “redistribution” by black “thugs” taking it upon themselves to “even the score” with whites by stealing everything and raping white women. Yes, one must oppose murder, but it is difficult to sympathize with the white South Africans whose entire existence for the 19^th and 20^th centuries in southern Africa was rooted in colonialism, theft, slavery, and apartheid. And the college professor overlooking the crimes against humanity committed by white South Africa against the black majority, as well as the present extreme poverty, rape, and assaults against blacks, presents another instance of his inability to truly see black South Africans as fellow people deserving as much of a right to live as whites like himself. The following quote below best indicates his (as well as Coetzee’s) disdain for the present state of South Africa:

"A risk to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to ago around, not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day. That is the theory; hold to the theory and to the comforts of theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant. That is how one must see life in this country: in its schematic aspect. Otherwise one could go mad. Cars, shoes; women too. There must be some niche in the system for women and what happens to them."

Here, David Lurie, our disgraced, sexist former professor of communications, clearly believes contemporary South Africa, one of the crime capitals of the world, is victimized by the proclaimed “socialist” or redistributive policies supposedly espoused by the African National Congress and other black political organizations across Africa. He may be correct that Lucy should not have kept silent about her rape and then agree to a marriage alliance with the scheming black former hired help, but now expanding, industrious farmer, Petrus, but her ability to understand her role as a white woman in the persisting unequal social conditions of South Africa place her in a better position than her father, who still wants to look after her despite not even truly knowing her (he was not even aware that she had an abortion in the past, nor does he ever imagine himself as the rape victim to truly be in her shoes or understand how his own love affair with Melanie Isaacs was akin to rape). Indeed, his opinion of her decision to not tell the police about the obvious fact she was raped is best stated by a letter he places under her door:

“I don't agree. I don't agree with what you are doing. Do you think that by meekly accepting what happened to you, you can set yourself apart from farmers like Ettinger? Do you think what happened here was an exam: if you come through, you get a diploma and safe conduct into the future, or a sign to paint on the door-lintel that will make the plague pass you by? That is not how vengeance works, Lucy. Vengeance is like a fire. The more it devours, the hungrier it gets."

            Therefore, David Lurie, though resembling the author in some ways, as well as being a white South African male endowed with all the privileges laden in those identities, should not be used to justify accusations of racism against Coetzee himself. His focus on the worldview of so many white South Africans while seemingly ignoring the humanity of blacks in the novel is also specious. One can see that his focus on the cruelty of society toward animals in the novel, especially dogs, may be perceived by some as placing the suffering and abject poverty of black South Africans as below that of animals. Furthermore, the text contains numerous references to “primitive” practices of the blacks such as muti and poking fun at the English spoken by Petrus, a middle-aged African hired help eager to takeover Lucy’s land. Indeed, blacks are not presented as “sophisticated” people. However, their humanity and inner thoughts, though not explicitly stated, remain absent referents for the white racist views of South Africans such as David Lurie. Indeed, Petrus’s enigmatic responses to Lurie regarding his knowledge of the perpetrators of the robbery, rape of his daughter, and nearly killing him, illumine his intelligence. Instead of showing deference for the whites or immediately giving up the youngest of the attackers, a relative of his second wife, Petrus later has the youth taken in on his own neighboring farm, even though he could be the father of Lucy’s future child. Petrus represents a new black South African peasantry no longer afraid of whites, reluctant to continue the old paternalism of relations between white landowners and black laborers. His intelligence, despite lacking formal education, as well as industriousness, pays off in terms of acquisition of additional property, tools and technology for modern agriculture. However, he defense of his rapist relation, Pollux, and views on marriage clearly show his patriarchal tendencies, as well as his suspected scheming in orchestrating an attack on Lucy solely to hasten his land grabs, clearly lead one to conclude he is far from an ideal, man. However, one could argue this best represents his humanity as David Lurie or Lucy, since, like whites, blacks in post-apartheid South Africa are just as culpable in the extreme deprivation and oppression of each other and other representatives of the animal kingdom, the hordes of unwanted animals that must be put to sleep by Bev Shaw. 

            Indeed, as one can clearly see, Petrus’s well-rounded character of hard-working, dedicated and skilled farmer contradicts the narrative of white South Africa of “savage” blacks. In spite of this, most blacks in the novel do not receive the same degree of development or even hints of their inner thoughts outwardly expressed. Furthermore, most of the characters are whites, which may be interpreted by some as reinforcing the white supremacist narrative of post-apartheid South Africa. In truth, Coetzee’s well-written, short novel best represents the disgraced state of humanity itself in the terrible conditions prevailing both in South Africa and abroad. His narrow lens in the text focusing on whites itself is a criticism of those views that perpetuate this aforementioned disgrace, whether its victimhood or perpetrators inflicting rape and other forms of violence on each other and animals around them. Moreover, this story also indicates Coetzee’s consistent critique of the state's role in upholding this disgrace, which is of course a result of internal decisions compounded by societal structures that enhance rape, racism, and other forms of disgrace. In the end, David Lurie accepts his disgrace by, in the opinion of this blogger, letting the dog he grew fond of be "put down" instead of prolonging its inevitable death and suffering. Likewise, one would like to think he finally accepts his disgrace by no longer exerting his force onto his daughter and others, allowing Lucy to make her own decisions about her rape, and the child born of it. David says it best:

 "In my own terms, I am being punished for what happened between myself and your daughter. I am sunk into a state of disgrace from which it will not be easy to lift myself. It is not a punishment I have refused. I do not murmur against it. On the contrary, I am living it out from day to day, trying to accept disgrace as my state of being. Is it enough for God, do you think, that I live in disgrace without term?"