Can We Be Friends Here? Visitation and Hospitality in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace

In his 1999 novel, Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee deals with both the perspicuous and subtle ways in which personal relationships in post-apartheid South Africa are conditioned by the persistent and entrenched legacy of apartheid and of centuries of racial inequality and oppression. However, and it is here that my analysis differs from those racialised readings the novel has received, Disgrace points to the fallacies of post-1994 'rainbowism' by showing that inter-racial conflict is just one among the many others at work in South African society: the novel is pervaded by acts of violent intrusion that highlight the hostility and lack of understanding not only between blacks and whites, but also between different social groups such as landowners and tenants, country people and people from the city, men and women, parents and children, the old and the young, religious and non-religious people, and between human beings and animals. Simultaneously, we encounter acts of friendly visitation and hospitality that, on a more optimistic note, point to the possibility of creating a new community on the land in South Africa. Since unequal power relations in South Africa have been very much dependent on an unfair distribution and zealous possession of the land, Disgrace also suggests that the right relation to the land is that of the person who, instead of creating bonds of rooted attachment with it, adopts the stance of the visitor or guest. In order to justify my arguments, I will be often appealing to the textual immanence of the novel, in particular to over-lexicalisation and lexical repetition, central devices to which critics have not paid enough attention and which constitute explicit clues as to how to read this intensely self-reflexive novel. This article is part of the following collections: Terence Ranger Prize Notes 1 E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (London, Penguin, 2000), p. 316. *This article is part of a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (ref. FFI2009-13244), whose support is gratefully acknowledged. 2 R. Fowler, Linguistic Criticism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, 2nd ed.), p. 95, discusses foregrounding in the following terms: 'whenever some item or construction appears in a text with unusual or noticeable frequency and apparently for some valid reason, then cumulatively a distinctive effect emerges'. 3 J.M. Coetzee, 'Working with Translators', in A. Lianeri and V. Zajko (eds), Translation and the Classic: Identity as Change in the History of Culture (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 408. 4 G. Pechey, 'Coetzee's Purgatorial Africa: The Case of Disgrace', Interventions, 4, 3 (2002), p. 378, calls attention to Lurie's use of polyptoton and etymology, to his experimentation with alternative words in order 'to capture a particular feeling-tone of experience', and to his foregrounding of single words and the romance of the 'micro-narratives' hidden in them. For Barnard, '[t]he novel's instances of linguistic erudition – the foreign words, the interest in etymology, and also the recurrent reflections on the perfective form of the verb ... serve as markers of David Lurie's academic and cosmopolitan mode of thought'. See R. Barnard, 'J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace and the South African Pastoral', Contemporary Literature, 44, 2 (Summer 2003), p. 207. 5 J.M. Coetzee, 'Achterberg's "Ballade van de gasfitter": The Mystery of I and You', in D. Attwell (ed.), Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 88. 6 See D. Attridge, J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004). 7 D. Attridge, The Singularity of Literature (New York, Routledge, 2004), p. 65. Emphasis original. 8 D. Attridge, The Singularity of Literature (New York, Routledge, 2004), p. 65. Emphasis original, p. 73. Emphasis original. 9 D. Attridge, The Singularity of Literature (New York, Routledge, 2004), p. 65. Emphasis original, p. 66. 10 Some of these allegorical readings have too simplistically assimilated the novel's characters into pre-defined types and its literary discourse into history. See, for example, F. Stratton, 'Imperial Fictions: J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace', Ariel, 33, 3–4 (July–October 2002), pp. 83–104. Attridge has cautioned against allegorical readings of this kind, urging us to engage with Disgrace 'as a literary work, not as historical reportage, political prescription, or allegorical scheme'. See D. Attridge, 'J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace: Introduction', Interventions, 4, 3 (2002), p. 319. 11 For an interpretation of Lucy as 'the sacrificial victim of history, the lamb, the scapegoat', see E. Boehmer, 'Sorry, Sorrier, Sorriest: The Gendering of Contrition in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace', in J. Poyner (ed.), J.M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2006), p. 144. 12 J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (London, Secker and Warburg, 1999), p. 118. 13 J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (London, Secker and Warburg, 1999), p. 125. 14 J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (London, Secker and Warburg, 1999), p. 131. 15 J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (London, Secker and Warburg, 1999), p. 124. 16 J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (London, Secker and Warburg, 1999), p. 133. Emphasis added. 17 J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (London, Secker and Warburg, 1999), p. 158. Emphasis added. 18 J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (London, Secker and Warburg, 1999), p. 202. Emphasis added. 19 J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (London, Secker and Warburg, 1999), p. 204. Emphasis added. 20 G. Cornwell, 'Disgraceland: History and the Humanities in Frontier Country', English in Africa, 30, 2 (October 2003), pp. 43–68, analyses the historical significance of this setting, where the nine Frontier Wars between the British and the Xhosa people were fought in the nineteenth century. 21 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 125. 22 T.F. Strode, The Ethics of Exile: Colonialism in the Fiction of Charles Brockden Brown and J.M. Coetzee (London, Routledge, 2005), p. 225. Emphasis original. 23 Petrus is beneficiary of the new legislation on land property and distribution, specifically the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act of 1996, which aimed at redressing the gross imbalances in the distribution of rural land by allowing labour tenants to acquire land and security of tenure on the properties on which they worked. See Strode, Ethics of Exile, p. 221. 24 Strode, Ethics of Exile, p. 220. 25 Coetzee, Disgrace, pp. 30-1. 26 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 104. 27 J.M. Coetzee, The Master of Petersburg (London, Vintage, 1999), p. 84. 28 For Derrida's discussions of hospitality, see J. Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999); J. Derrida and A. Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000); and G. Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2003). 29 J.M. Coetzee, Age of Iron (New York, Penguin, 1998), p. 4. 30 J.M. Coetzee, Age of Iron (New York, Penguin, 1998), p. 5. 31 J.M. Coetzee, Age of Iron (New York, Penguin, 1998), p. 28. 32 In David's Story, another important post-apartheid novel, Zoë Wicomb also refers to Africans as the legitimate hosts of South Africa. As they lope along the strand at the Cape of Good Hope, watching the arrival of a Dutch ship, we read that 'history is one that has failed to imagine the world from another's point of view, even if the other were, strictly speaking, the hosts'. Z. Wicomb, David's Story (New York, The Feminist Press, 2001), p. 87. 33 Coetzee, Age of Iron, p. 25. 34 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 107. 35 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 110. 36 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 111. 37 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 115. 38 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 140. 39 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 159. 40 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 107. 41 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 119. Emphasis original. 42 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 158. Emphasis added. 43 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 133. Emphasis added. 46 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 158. 44 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 10. Emphasis added. 45 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 24. Emphasis added. 47 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 9. 48 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 25. 49 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 159. 50 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 160. 51 J.M. Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country (London, Vintage, 2004), p. 117. 52 J.M. Coetzee, Dusklands (London, Vintage, 2004), p. 20. 53 J.M. Coetzee, Dusklands (London, Vintage, 2004), p. 80. 54 J.M. Coetzee, Dusklands (London, Vintage, 2004), p. 81. 55 J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (London, Vintage, 2000), p. 46. 56 Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country, p. 128. 57 Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, p. 34. 58 J.M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K (London, Vintage, 1998), p. 140. 59 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 189. 60 Coetzee, Age of Iron, p. 161. 61 Coetzee, Disgrace, pp. 209–10. 62 J.M. Coetzee, 'Jerusalem Prize Acceptance Speech', in Attwell (ed.), Doubling the Point, p. 98. 63 Breyten Breytenbach, Dog Heart: A Memoir (London, Faber, 1999), pp. 1, 54, 121, 195. 64 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 209. 65 Rita Barnard refers to the socio-spatial dialectic expressed in the phrase 'knowing one's place' in Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 3–4. This study is an excellent analysis of the political and cultural significance of key places in South African literature. 66 Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country, p. 30. 67 Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country, p. 122. 68 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 127. 69 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 116. 70 Barnard, 'J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace and the South African Pastoral', p. 212. 71 K. Reinhard, 'Disgrace and the Neighbor: An Interchange with Bill McDonald', in B. McDonald (ed.), Encountering Disgrace: Reading and Teaching Coetzee's Novel (Rochester, Camden House, 2009), p. 101 argues that the novel's central question for post-apartheid South Africa is 'who is my neighbor? What does it mean to love my neighbor?'. 75 Coetzee, Disgrace 72 K.W. Grundy, Confrontation and Accommodation in Southern Africa: The Limits of Independence (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1973), p. 236. 73 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 152. Emphasis added. 74 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 102. 76 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 112. 77 J. Derrida, The Politics of Friendship (London, Verso, 2005), p. viii. Emphasis original. 78 S. Lynch, 'Aristotle and Derrida on Friendship', Contretemps, 3 (July 2002), p. 101. 79 S. Lynch, 'Aristotle and Derrida on Friendship', Contretemps, 3 (July 2002), pp. 105–6. 80 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 194. 81 E.W. Said, The World, the Text and the Critic (London, Vintage, 1983), p. 17. 82 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 20. Emphasis original. 83 Said, The World, the Text and the Critic, p. 17. 84 Said, The World, the Text and the Critic, p. 16. 85 Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, p. 92. Emphasis original. 86 Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, p. 105. Emphasis original. 87 Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, p. 92. 88 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 194. 89 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 199. 90 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 25. 91 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 201. Emphasis original. 92 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 204. 93 Said, The World, the Text and the Critic, p. 16. 94 Breytenbach, Dog Heart, p. 35. 95 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 196. 96 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 65. 97 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 131. 98 D. Attridge, 'Literary Form and the Demands of Politics: Otherness in J.M. Coetzee's Age of Iron', in S. Kossew (ed.), Critical Essays on J.M. Coetzee (New York, G.K. Hall, 1998), p. 206. 99 Derrida and Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality, p. 59. 100 Derrida and Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality, 61. 101 Derrida and Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality, 25. 102 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 59. 103 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 65. 104 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 124. 105 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 141. 106 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 150. 107 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 164. 108 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 168. 109 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 170. 112 Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, p. 35. 110 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 173. 111 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 131. 113 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 74. 114 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 78. 115 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 126. 116 Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, p. 195. 119 Coetzee, Disgrace, pp. 217–18. Emphasis added. 117 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 88. 118 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 216. 120 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 218. 121 J.M. Coetzee, 'J.M. Coetzee: Interview by Folke Rhedin', Kunapipi, 6, 1 (1984), p. 7. 127 J. Derrida, Acts of Religion (New York, Routledge, 2002), p. 91. 122 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 113. 123 Coetzee, Age of Iron, p. 108. 124 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 176. Emphasis added. 125 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 134. 126 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 117. 128 J.M. Coetzee, 'The Great South African Novel', Leadership SA, 2, 4 (Summer 1983), p. 79. 129 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 175. 130 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 197. 131 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 211. 132 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 117. 133 J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (London, Vintage, 1998), p. 79. 134 J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (London, Vintage, 1998), p. 79. 135 J.M. Coetzee, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (London, Vintage, 1998), p. 96. 136 J.M. Coetzee, White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1988), p. 175. 137 Coetzee, Disgrace, p. 200. 138 Coetzee, 'Jerusalem Prize Acceptance Speech', p. 97. 139 Coetzee, In the Heart of the Country, p. 20. 140 Coetzee, Boyhood, p. 96. 141 N. Mandela, 'Statement of the President of the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela, at his Inauguration as President of the Democratic Republic of South Africa, Union Buildings, Pretoria, May 10 1994', available at http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Inaugural_Speech_17984.html (retrieved on 12 March 2008). 142 See L. Kruger, '"Africa Thina"? Xenophobic and Cosmopolitan Agency in Johannesburg's Film and Television Drama', Journal of Southern African Studies, 35, 1 (March 2009), pp. 237–52; and D. Pucherova, 'Re-Imagining the Other: The Politics of Friendship in Three Twenty-First Century South African Novels', JSAS, 35, 4 (December 2009), pp. 929–43. 143 J.M. Coetzee, 'The Memoirs of Breyten Breytenbach', in Stranger Shores: Essays 1986–1999 (London, Vintage, 2002), p. 313. 144 Breytenbach, Dog Heart, p. 145. 145 Coetzee, 'The Memoirs of Breyten Breytenbach', p. 313

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