Shifting the Voice: Postcolonial Feminism in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and in the Heart of the Country

Shaimaa Mohamed Hassanin

Vol-6,Issue-1,January - February 2021

Author: Shaimaa Mohamed Hassanin

Keywords: J.M. Coetzee, African Literature, Feminism, Pastoral, Apartheid.

Abstract: This paper explores the crossing points of women’s liberation and postcolonialism as far as the issue of silence and narrating is concerned. It does so by analyzing the characters of Madga and Lucy in J.M. Coetzee’s novels’ In the Heart of the Country and Disgrace. It is contended that colonialist ideology capacities work by the same way that patriarchal philosophy does with regard to the abuse of the racism and feminism, separately. Coetzee’s novels draw our attention to the threats of allotment characteristics of any philosophy. Vitally, the novels handle the verbose resistance to the colonialist and patriarchal ideology through Magda and Lucy. By interlacing postcolonialism and women’s liberation, Coetzee’s accomplishment, hence, is twofold: a study of western totalizing accounts and multiplying of political and ideological thrust of his novels. J.M. Coetzee is routinely and thoroughly locked in investigating the ontological and epistemological issues significant to the anecdotal discourse. The arrangement of his authorial positions and the arranging his area in post-apartheid South Africa occurs fundamentally through the textual positions. Coetzee appears to support the view that self-reflexive writing is the only mode through which he can rise above the concerns of reality and history. Indeed, when Coetzee’s fiction has prevailed after distinctive story styles or designs one can find certain fundamental issues that run through them. Origin, dialect, mastery, marginalization, the issue of authority, reflexive self-awareness, the issue of portrayal and the strongly and interconnected deployment of these concerns make his writings appear as the quintessence of hypothetical and ideological inscriptions. These are the strings which interface his writings and emphasize the net of textual relations. As radical metafiction may be a substantial way of recording one’s encounter since it does away with the tyranny of authenticity, Coetzee has turned to it in a viable way within the complex field of his literary world.

Article Info: Received: 26 Oct 2020; Received in revised form: 20 Jan 2021; Accepted: 09 Feb 2021; Available online: 20 Feb 2021

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.61.38