Human Rights, Social Justice, and J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
In its engagement with the relative successes and failures of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace explicitly invokes the concept of human rights only to expose the many limitations of rights as vehicles for approaching social justice. Disgrace first juxtaposes its protagonist’s “rights of desire” with human rights, thereby exposing significant liabilities of rights talk. At the same time, it contemplates a communitarian mode of interpersonal solidarity as an alternative to the rights paradigm. However, in the end, its insistence upon the indeterminate status of justice is paradoxically what enables its ethical and political force.
Rape and the Violence of Representation in J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace
An analysis of Disgrace's representation of sexual violence exposes the inextricability of the social categories of gender, class, and race insofar as these identities are shown to accrue meaning in relation to one another rather than a posteriori. Specifically, the novel demonstrates that rape is not primarily a gendered crime that is then complicated by considerations of race or class, but a deeply discursive phenomenon whose material consequences are constituted by the profoundly racialized and class-based discourses that give it meaning. This paper shows how the discrepancy between the responses to the two rapes in the novel is only naturalized when insufficient attention is paid to the workings of narration, narrative, and racial politics. Coetzee's book exposes not just the contingency of justice but also the deeply racialized nature of this contingency, whether the response to rape occurs in black South Africa or in the white liberal context of the university.
In 1926: Living at the Edge of Time
User's manual: airplanes Americans in Paris asssembly lines automobiles bars boxing bullfighting cremation dancing elevators employees endurance engineers gomina gramophones hunger artists jazz league of nations mountaineering movie palaces mummies murder ocean liners polarities railroads reporters revues roof gardens six-day races stars strikes telephones timepieces wireless communication. Codes: action versus impotence authenticity versus artificiality centre versus periphery immanence versus transcendence individuality versus collectivity male versus female present versus past silence versus noise sobriety versus exuberance uncertainty versus reality action = impotence (tragedy) authenticity = artificiality (life) centre = periphery (infinitude) immanence = transendence (death) indiciduality = collectivity (leader) male = female (gender trouble) present = past (eternity). frames: after learning from history being-in the-worlds of 1926 - Martin Heidegger, Hans Friedrich Blunck, Carl Van Vechten.