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.
South Africa, the USA, and the Globalization of Truth and Reconciliation: Itinerant Mourning in Zakes Mda's Cion
This essay juxtaposes two different visions of ‘‘itinerant mourning,’’ a term I borrow from the South African playwright and fiction writer, Zakes Mda. The first version of this practice that I would like to address can be found in the model of transitional justice that went into global circulation almost as soon as the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, 1996–8) began work in 1996, but particularly in the years following the publication of its 1998 Report. The second version of ‘‘itinerant mourning’’ is represented in Mda’s latest novel, Cion (2007). As I will detail below, Cion transports the protagonist of Ways of Dying (1995)—Mda’s novel about the South African transition to democracy—from South Africa to the United States, specifically to the area surrounding Ohio University, Athens, where Mda currently works as Professor of Creative Writing. This protagonist is the inimitable Toloki, whose occupation as ‘‘professional mourner’’ is, of course, key to this essay’s project of mapping out new areas of transnational connection between the US and South Africa, and exploring the openings for social transformation that appear as forms of politics and works of art move across localities within the broader context of twenty-first century globalization.
Kafka's narrators : a study of his stories and sketches
Introduction: narrator and story 1. The Kafka story: structure and meaning 2. The impersonal narrator of the early tales: 'The judgement' ('Das Urteil'), 'The metamorphosis' ('Die Verwandlung') 3. Officer versus traveller: 'In the penal colony' ('In der Strafkolonie') 4. The breakdown of the impersonal narrator: 'Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor' ('Blumfeld, ein alterer Junggeselle') 5. The identifiable narrator of 'A hunger artist' ('Ein Hungerkunstler') 6. Third-person and first-person fables and parables 7. Last tales: the stories with human characters 8. Last tales: the animal stories Epilogue Notes Index.