The Gorgon’s Head: On Narration, Torture and Truth-Seeking in J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and in the South African TNC’s History-Writing and Restorative Undertaking
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2019.i13.560Parole chiave:
Coetzee, Torture, Post-colonial literatureAbstract
The article retrospectively considers the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s main assumptions and procedures concerning truth-seeking, narration and, by implication, healing, forgiveness and reconciliation, in the problematizing light that J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) can shed upon them. The narrative choices made by Coetzee to tackle in ethically acceptable ways torture and, broadly, any inhuman authoritarian violence on the powerless victim’s body are discussed by drawing on the arguments advanced in his essay “Into the Dark Chamber: The Writer and the South African State” (1986) and in the chapter “The Problem of Evil” of his novel Elizabeth Costello (2003). Zinato comparatively ponders on the ‘hermeneutic’ approaches respectively employed in their truth-seeking practices by a) Coetzee’s ethically-oriented fiction, b) the perpetrator’s inquisitorial torture procedures authorized by state terrorism (represented in the novel by Joll and Mandel), and c) the TRC’s rules of procedure espoused in their courageous, unprecedented undertaking. In doing so, she necessarily passes through crucial issues investing the novel as much as the TRC’s “staging” and recording/filing of the hearings: the relationship between torture/violence and language/narration (directly involving the novelist’s responsible representation), the questioning of the healing power of post-traumatic story-telling, and of forgiveness.Riferimenti bibliografici
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Blommaert, Jan, Mary Bock and Kay McCormick. “Narrative Inequality in the TRC Hearings: On the
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Cole, Catherine. Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission: Stages of Transition. Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 2010.
Coundouriotis, Eleni. “The Dignity of the ‘Unfittest’: Victims’ Stories in South Africa.” Human Rights Quarterly
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Derrida, Jacques. “To Forgive: The Unforgivable and the Imprescriptible.” Questioning God. Ed. John D.
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and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Eds. Charles Villa-Vicentio and Wilhelm Verwoerd.
Cape Town: Cape Town UP/Zed Books, 2000. 184-192.
Mamdani, Mahmood. “Amnesty or Impunity? A preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC).” Diacritics 32.3 (2002): 33-59.
McDonald, Peter. “The Writer, the Critic, and the Censor. J.M. Coetzee and the Question of Literature.” J.M.
Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual. Ed. Jane Poyner, Athens: Ohio UP, 2006. 42-62.
Minow, Martha. Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence.
New York: Beacon Press, 1998.
Moosa, Ebrahim. “Truth and Reconciliation as Performance: Spectre of Eucharistic Redemption.” Looking
Back. Reaching Forward. Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Eds. Charles
Villa-Vicentio and Wihlelm Verwoerd. Cape Town: Cape Town UP/Zed Books, 2000. 113-122.
Morris, Rosalind C. “In the Name of Trauma: Notes on Testimony, Truth Telling and the Secret of Literature
in South Africa.” Comparative Literature Studies 48.3 (2011): 388-416.
Oboe, Annalisa. “The TRC Women’s Hearings as Performance and Protest in the New South Africa.”
Research in African Literatures 38.3 (Fall 2007): 60-76.
Revault d’Allonnes, Myriam. “La vie refigurée: les implications éthiques du récit.” Archives de Philosophie
74.4 (2011): 599-610.
Ricoeur, Paul. “La vie: un récit en quête de narrateur.” Écrits et conferences 1. Paris: Seuil, 1994/2008. 257-
275.
Ross, Fiona. Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.
London: Pluto. 2003.
Sanders, Mark. “Hearing Women.” Ambiguities of Witnessing: Law and Literature in the Time of a Truth
Commission. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007. 59-86.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.
Starobinski, Jean. “Il testo e l’interprete.” Le ragioni del testo. Ed. Carmelo Colangelo. Milano: Mondadori,
2003. 7-27.
Trevor, James. “Locating the Sacred. J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians.” “And the Birds Began to
Sing”. Religion and Literature in Post-Colonial Cultures. Ed. Jamie S. Scott. Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1996. 141-150.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Report. Vol. 1. Cape Town: Juta and Co., 1998.
http://www.struth.org.za/. Last visited May 24, 2019.
Urquart, Troy. “Truth, Reconciliation, and the Restoration of the State: Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians.”
Twentieth-Century Literature 52.1 (Spring 2006): 1-21.
Vermeulen, Pieter. “Being True to Fact. Coetzee’s Prose of the World.” J.M. Coetzee and Ethics:
Philosophical Perspectives on Literature. Eds. Anton Leist and Peter Singer. New York: Columbia
UP, 2010. 269-289.
Villa-Vicentio, Charles. “Getting on with Life: A Move Towards Reconciliation.” Looking Back, Reaching
Forward. Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Eds. Charles
Villa-Vicentio and Wihlelm Verwoerd. Cape Town: Cape Town UP/Zed Books, 2000. 199-209.
Wenzel, Jennifer. “Keys to the Labyrinth: Writing, Torture, and Coetzee’s Barbarian Girl.” Tulsa Studies in
Women’s Literature 15.1 (Spring 1996): 61-71.
Wicomb, Zoë. David’s Story. Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2000.
Wilson, Richard A. The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. Legitimizing The Post-Apartheid
State. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.
Young, Sandra. “Narrative and Healing in the Hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission.” Biography 7.1 (2004): 145-162.
1951.
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995.
---. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. (Stato di eccezione. Torino: Bollati
Boringhieri, 2003).
Attwell, David, ed. Doubling the Point. Essays and Interviews. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992
---. J.M. Coetzee. South Africa and the Politics of Writing. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1993.
---. J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing. Face to Face with Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Attwell David and Harlow, Barbara. “Introduction: South African Fiction after Apartheid.” Modern
Fiction Studies 46.1 (2000): 1-9.
Blommaert, Jan, Mary Bock and Kay McCormick. “Narrative Inequality in the TRC Hearings: On the
Hearability of Hidden Transcripts.” Journal of Language and Politics 5.1 (2006): 37-70.
Clarkson, Carrol. J.M. Coetzee: Countervoices. New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Coetzee, J.M. In the Heart of the Country. London: Penguin, 1977.
---. Waiting for the Barbarians. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1980.
---. “The Novel Today.” Upstream 6.1 (1988): 2-5.
---. “Into the Dark Chamber: The Writer and the South African State.” Doubling the Point. Essays and
Interviews. Ed. David Attwell. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992a. 361-368.
---. Disgrace. London: Secker & Warburg, 1999.
---. Elizabeth Costello. London: Secker & Warburg, 2003.
Coetzee, J.M., and Stephen Watson. “Speaking: J.M. Coetzee.” Interview. Speak 1.3 (1978): 23-24.
Coetzee, J.M., and Richard Begam. “Interview with J.M. Coetzee.” Contemporary Literature 33.3 (Autumn
1992b): 419-431.
Cole, Catherine. Performing South Africa’s Truth Commission: Stages of Transition. Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 2010.
Coundouriotis, Eleni. “The Dignity of the ‘Unfittest’: Victims’ Stories in South Africa.” Human Rights Quarterly
28.4 (Nov. 2006): 842-867.
Derrida, Jacques. “To Forgive: The Unforgivable and the Imprescriptible.” Questioning God. Ed. John D.
Caputo et al. Trans. Elizabeth Rottenber. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001. 21-51.
Di Cesare, Donatella. Tortura. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2016.
Eckstein, Barbara. “The Body, the Word, and the State: J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians.” Novel: A
Forum on Fiction 22.2 (Winter 1989): 175-198.
Duterte, Pierre. Terres inhumaines. Un medécin face à la torture. Paris: JC Lattès, 2007.
Folena, Lucia. “Figures of Violence: Philologists, Witches and Stalinistas.” The Violence of Representation.
Literature and the History of Violence. Eds. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse. New York:
Routledge, 1989. 219-238.
Foucault, Michel. Society Must be Defended. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76. Eds. Mauro
Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. London: Picador, 2003.
Gallagher, Susan Van Zanten. A Story of South Africa: J.M. Coetzee’s Fiction in Context. Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1991.
Giffel, Kaelie. “Historical Violence and Modernist Forms in Zoë Wicomb’ David’s Story.” Twentieth-Century
Literature 64.1 (March 2018): 53-78.
Hayes, Grahame. “We Suffer Our Memories: Thinking about the Past, Healing, and Reconciliation.”
American Imago 55.1 (Spring 1998): 29-50.
Head, Dominic. “A Belief in Frogs: J.M. Coetzee’s Enduring Faith in Fiction.” J.M. Coetzee and The Idea of
the Public Intellectual. Ed. Jane Poyner. Athens: Ohio UP, 2006. 100-117.
Kossew, Sue. “The Politics of Shame and Redemption in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” Research in African
Literatures 34.2 (Summer 2003): 155-162.
Krog, Antje. Country of my Skull. Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa. New
York: Three Rivers Press, 2000.
Jankélévitch, Vladimir. “Should We Pardon Them?” Critical Inquiry 22 (1996): 552-572.
Jolly, Rosemary Jane. Colonization, Violence, and Narration in White South African Writing: André Brink,
Breyten Breytenbach, and J.M. Coetzee. Athens: Ohio UP, 1996.
Lyster, Richard. “Amnesty: The Burden of Victim.” Looking Back. Reaching Forward. Reflections on the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Eds. Charles Villa-Vicentio and Wilhelm Verwoerd.
Cape Town: Cape Town UP/Zed Books, 2000. 184-192.
Mamdani, Mahmood. “Amnesty or Impunity? A preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC).” Diacritics 32.3 (2002): 33-59.
McDonald, Peter. “The Writer, the Critic, and the Censor. J.M. Coetzee and the Question of Literature.” J.M.
Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual. Ed. Jane Poyner, Athens: Ohio UP, 2006. 42-62.
Minow, Martha. Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence.
New York: Beacon Press, 1998.
Moosa, Ebrahim. “Truth and Reconciliation as Performance: Spectre of Eucharistic Redemption.” Looking
Back. Reaching Forward. Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Eds. Charles
Villa-Vicentio and Wihlelm Verwoerd. Cape Town: Cape Town UP/Zed Books, 2000. 113-122.
Morris, Rosalind C. “In the Name of Trauma: Notes on Testimony, Truth Telling and the Secret of Literature
in South Africa.” Comparative Literature Studies 48.3 (2011): 388-416.
Oboe, Annalisa. “The TRC Women’s Hearings as Performance and Protest in the New South Africa.”
Research in African Literatures 38.3 (Fall 2007): 60-76.
Revault d’Allonnes, Myriam. “La vie refigurée: les implications éthiques du récit.” Archives de Philosophie
74.4 (2011): 599-610.
Ricoeur, Paul. “La vie: un récit en quête de narrateur.” Écrits et conferences 1. Paris: Seuil, 1994/2008. 257-
275.
Ross, Fiona. Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.
London: Pluto. 2003.
Sanders, Mark. “Hearing Women.” Ambiguities of Witnessing: Law and Literature in the Time of a Truth
Commission. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007. 59-86.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.
Starobinski, Jean. “Il testo e l’interprete.” Le ragioni del testo. Ed. Carmelo Colangelo. Milano: Mondadori,
2003. 7-27.
Trevor, James. “Locating the Sacred. J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians.” “And the Birds Began to
Sing”. Religion and Literature in Post-Colonial Cultures. Ed. Jamie S. Scott. Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1996. 141-150.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Report. Vol. 1. Cape Town: Juta and Co., 1998.
http://www.struth.org.za/. Last visited May 24, 2019.
Urquart, Troy. “Truth, Reconciliation, and the Restoration of the State: Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians.”
Twentieth-Century Literature 52.1 (Spring 2006): 1-21.
Vermeulen, Pieter. “Being True to Fact. Coetzee’s Prose of the World.” J.M. Coetzee and Ethics:
Philosophical Perspectives on Literature. Eds. Anton Leist and Peter Singer. New York: Columbia
UP, 2010. 269-289.
Villa-Vicentio, Charles. “Getting on with Life: A Move Towards Reconciliation.” Looking Back, Reaching
Forward. Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa. Eds. Charles
Villa-Vicentio and Wihlelm Verwoerd. Cape Town: Cape Town UP/Zed Books, 2000. 199-209.
Wenzel, Jennifer. “Keys to the Labyrinth: Writing, Torture, and Coetzee’s Barbarian Girl.” Tulsa Studies in
Women’s Literature 15.1 (Spring 1996): 61-71.
Wicomb, Zoë. David’s Story. Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2000.
Wilson, Richard A. The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. Legitimizing The Post-Apartheid
State. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.
Young, Sandra. “Narrative and Healing in the Hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission.” Biography 7.1 (2004): 145-162.
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Articoli (sezione generale) - letteratura inglese e letterature postcoloniali
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