Counterfocalizations on the narrated representations of indigenous peoples : a comparative study on John Maxwell Coetzee’s Disgrace and Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Rumah Kaca - USD Repository
COUNTERFOCALIZATIONS ON THE NARRATED
REPRESENTATIONS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES:
A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON JOHN MAXWELL
COETZEE’S DISGRACE AND PRAMOEDYA ANANTA
TOER’S RUMAH KACA
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By
WAHMUJI
Student Number: 034214112
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
COUNTERFOCALIZATIONS ON THE NARRATED
REPRESENTATIONS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: A
COMPARATIVE STUDY ON JOHN MAXWELL COETZEE’S
DISGRACE AND PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER’S RUMAH
KACA
Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters
By
WAHMUJI
Student Number: 034214112
ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS
FACULTY OF LETTERS
SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
.
MOTTO
“Seorang terpelajar dituntut bisa berlaku adil sudah sejak dalam pikirannya”- -Pramoedya Ananta Toer-
“Science has not yet put a limit on how long one has to wait”
- - John Maxwell Coetzee-
“There is nothing more pleasing to the Javanese than to be in
a position where they will have to work less”- -J. van den Bosch-
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, let me give my greatest gratitude to my parents, the ones who have been the main motivator and the main financial sponsor in my study process.
If it were not for them, I will rethink to get an academic degree in literature.
I would like to thank Modesta Luluk Artika Windrasti, S.S. for the corrections and guidance during the process of the thesis. I also thank her for lending me some important books I needed for the thesis. For the reader of this undergraduate thesis, Ni Luh Putu Rosiandani, S.S., M.Hum., I would like to thank for the priceless corrections and evaluations. My gratitude also goes to Dr. Novita Dewi, M.S., M.A. (Hons) who willingly read my writings and gave valuable support and suggestions.
I would like to thank Andreas Teguh Sudjarwadi for always reminding me to the intellectual tasks and pitfalls; I Putu Jody Setiawan, the first person who brought me into the sea of literary theory; Wahyu Adi Putra Ginting, my interlocutor for many discourses, including this thesis.
For all the people in Media Sastra, thanks for disciplining me in studying literature. I thank all people in Komunitas Orong-Orong for encouraging me to comprehend many things from many different radical perspectives. For all people in LIDAHIBU, I would give my gratitude for the awareness–building of studying Linguistics.
I would like to thank special persons who technically helped my thesis. books on postcolonial study. The second is Akbar who has shared many data of Pramoedya Ananta Toer and study on nationalism. The third is Pokemon - thanks for lending your thesis on Java Instituut and some books I could not find in library, though not all of them used in my thesis.
Some friends, through utterance or short message service, have so many times asked me when I would finish my undergraduate study. Apart from their basic assumptions on me and my study process, their questions absurdly raise my spirit to read and write more. One name is appropriately presented here: Dewi Kurniawati. The last, I would give my gratitude to my sister, Vidy, who has softly motivated me in finishing my thesis.
For all people I have mentioned here in this page, I could only say: I hope this thesis would be intellectually useful.
WAHMUJI
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE ................................................................................................. i
APPROVAL PAGE ....................................................................................... ii ACCEPTANCE PAGE.................................................................................. iii MOTTO PAGE .............................................................................................. Iv LEMBAR PERNYATAAN PUBLIKASI KARYA ILMIAH .................... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT............................................................................. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................... viii ABSTRACT .................................................................................................... xi ABSTRAK ...................................................................................................... xiiCHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION …………………………………….. 1 A. Background of the Study ……………………………………. 1 B. Problem Formulation …………………………………….
7 C. Objectives of the Study ……………………………………. 7
D. Definition of Terms ……………………………………. 7
CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL REVIEW ………………………….. 12 A. Review of Related Studies ………………………………........ 12 B. Review of Related Theories…………………………………... 27
1. Theories on Comparative Study ………………………. 27
3. Theories on Representations …………………………... 35
4. Theory on Counterfocalization……………..…………
37
a. Sasa and Zamani ……………………………... 38 b. Relationship ………………………....................
39
c. Javanese Philosophy and Wayang ………........... 39
C. Theoretical Framework ……………………………………….. 41
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY……………………………………. 43 A. Object of the Study……………………………………………. 43 B. Approaches of the Study …………………………………... 46 1. Narratology……………………………………………..
46
2. Postcolonial Approach ………………………………… 47
C. Method of the Study…………………………………………… 48
CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS ………………………………………........ 49 A. Narrative Structures of the Narrators …………………... 49
1. Who Tells the Story …………………………...……… 49
2. Speech Representation and Focalization ……………… 53
3. Mimesis and Diegesis …………………………………. 63
B. Representations of Indigenous Peoples …………………... 68 1. Otherness ……………………………………................
68
2. Time and History …………………………………....... 72
4. Language ………………………………………….......
83 C. Counterfocalizations of the Representations …………….. 86 1. Difference ……………………………………………..
87
2. Time and History …………………………………....... 94
3. Gender Issue …………………………………………... 100
4. Language ……………………………………………… 106
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION …….………………………………….. 111 A. Concluding Remark ..…….…………………………………… 111 B. Suggestions ……………………………………………………. 122 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………..... 123
ABSTRACT
Wahmuji. Counterfocalizations on the Narrated Representations of
Indigenous Peoples: A Comparative Study on John Maxwell Coetzee’s
Disgrace and Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Rumah Kaca. Yogyakarta:
Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2009.
Self and other will always exist as long as human communicate with another, as long as a community cooperates with other communities. The representation of Other, simply to say the shown image of Other, is often standardized and becomes the final gate to comprehend, develop, and justify Other. In many cases of representing Other, especially in the realm of colonization and decolonization, the represented image of Other is politically manipulated for the interest of power. It creates unjust representation and homogenization. Therefore, a counterfocalization is necessary for understanding and rebelling the constellation of the valorized colonial discourse, and a comparative study is significant to dismantle the homogenization of postcolonial societies.
This study will first of all describe the narrative structures of the narrators in Rumah Kaca and Disgrace. Then, using some evidences conducted in the first step, this comparative study tries to identify the representations on the Indigenous Peoples given by the narrators in both novels. Furthermore, I will change the focus of understanding Indigenous Peoples, meaning to counterfocalize the representations.
The method used in this study is library research. Some steps applied in this study are collecting the data, doing close reading, picking up the data necessary for the problem formulations, reading and revealing the narrative structures of the narrators in both novels and the narrated representations of Indigenous Peoples, and counterfocalizing the representations. In analyzing narrative structures, narratology is used as the approach. Meanwhile, in reading the representation and proposing counterfocalizations, postcolonial approach is utilized. To compare the phenomena in the novels, I use some theories on comparative study.
Through the analysis of the narrative structures of the narrators, the evidences that the narrators are not neutral are elaborated. Through the analysis on the representations of Indigenous Peoples, I find that there are a lot of one-sided, unjust representations of Indigenous Peoples which legalize the colonizations both in Hindia Belanda and South Africa. The last, through the attempts on counterfocalizing, I find that Indigenous Philosophy and Thought are important devices for the struggle of decolonizations in many aspects of postcolonial societies. They are on the differences of constructed binary oppositions between the civilized-uncivilized, the narration of progressive history related to colonization, the issue of gender, and the language/s used in postcolonial
ABSTRAK
Wahmuji. Counterfocalizations on the Narrated Representations of
Indigenous Peoples: A Comparative Study on John Maxwell Coetzee’s
Disgrace and Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Rumah Kaca. Yogyakarta: Jurusan
Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2009.Diri dan liyan akan selalu ada sepanjang manusia berkomunikasi dengan manusia lainnya, sepanjang komunitas bekerjasama dengan komunitas lainnya. Kewadhagan atas Liyan, maksudnya citra Liyan yang ditunjukkan, seringkali dibakukan dan menjadi gerbang akhir untuk memahami, mengembangkan, dan menghakimi Liyan. Di banyak kasus pewadhagan Liyan, khususnya di alam penjajahan dan peluluhan-penjajahan, citra Liyan yang terwadhag dimanipulasi secara politis untuk kepentingan kekuasaan. Karenanya, terciptalah kewadhagan dan homogenisasi yang tidak adil. Oleh karena itu, sebuah sudut pandang tandingan dibutuhkan untuk memahami dan melawan konstelasi wacana kolonial yang dipenuhi hasrat menguasai, dan studi komparatif menjadi signifikan untuk membongkar homogenisasi masyarakat pascakolonial.
Studi ini dimulai dengan menjabarkan struktur naratif dari narrator dalam
Rumah Kaca dan Disgrace. Kemudian, menggunakan beberapa bukti yang
dihasilkan di langkah pertama, studi komparatif ini mencoba mengidentifikasi kewadhagan Masyarakat Pribumi yang dilakukan oleh narator di kedua novel. Selanjutnya, saya akan mengubah fokus pemahaman Masyarakat Pribumi, maksudnya memberikan sudut pandang tandingan pada kewadhagan-kewadhagan tersebut.
Metode yang digunakan dalam tesis ini adalah studi pustaka. Beberapa langkah yang diterapkan di studi ini adalah mengumpulkan data, melakukan pembacaan mendalam, mengambil data yang dibutuhkan untuk rumusan masalah, membaca dan menyingkap struktur naratif dari narator di kedua novel dan kewadhagan Masyarakat Pribumi yang dinarasikan, dan memberikan sudut pandang tandingan. Dalam menganalisis struktur naratif digunakan pendekatan naratologi. Sementara dalam membaca kewadhagan dan memberikan sudut pandang tandingan, dipakai pendekatan pascakolonial. Untuk membandingkan fenomena dalam kedua novel, saya menggunakan beberapa teori tentang studi komparatif.
Melalui analisis struktur naratif dari kedua narator, dielaborasikan bukti- bukti bahwa narator tidaklah netral. Melalui analisis kewadhagan Masyarakat Pribumi, saya menemukan bahwa ada banyak kewadhagan masyarakat Pribumi yang hanya satu sisi dan tidak adil, yang melegalkan kolonisasi di Hindia Belanda dan Afrika Selatan. Terakhir, melalui usaha untuk memberikan sudut pandang tandingan, saya menemukan bahwa Filsafat dan Pemikiran Masyarakat Pribumi merupakan alat perlawanan yang penting untuk peluluhan-penjajahan di banyak aspek masyarakat pascakolonial. Keduanya penting untuk melihat perbedaan kosokbali yang dikonstruksi antara beradab-biadab, narasi sejarah progresif yang and feminism: “The most exciting work in cinema and in feminism today is not anti-narrative…quite the opposite. It is a narrative…with a vengeance, for it seeks to stress the duplicity of that scenario and the specific contradiction of the female subject in it, the contradiction by which historical women must work with and against (narrative),” (McQuilian, 2000: 3). This consciousness on the male oppression as narrative is an important starting point of resistance. Lauretis celebrates the struggle in the form of narrative (counter-narrative) since she believes that narrative is universal. Although this statement is quite disputable, the power of creating resistance through narrative is highly worthy.
In the case of post-colonial studies, as one of some mainstream studies after the ‘subjunctive’ text Orientalism by Edward Said, narrative plays a great role in, to borrow Peter Barry’s words, ‘adapting’, ‘adopting’ and ‘adepting’ the wave of culture of colonizers as one of the ways of continuous process of resistance. Said confidently says in his Culture and Imperialism that the issues of imperialism, especially in the problems of the right owners of the lands and who to plan its future, “were reflected, contested, and even for a time decided in narrative,” (1994: xiii). Despite its indefinite definition, narrative is used attitudes; and to counter-attack, or, related to the term ‘narrative’, to counter- narrate them.
The large area of discussion in post-colonial study is simply possible-to- be-continued since the colonization and its resistances have appeared long time before the term post-colonial is used by present-day critics. Three issues researched in the present study are the structures of narrative, representation, and counterfocalization.
The narrative structures of the narrators are researched for they influence, or even determine, how the realities brought to the realm of literary works. The word ‘how’ means a lot. It depicts a way, a manner. It reveals a perspective(s). It brings ideological matters.
Representation is important since the process of colonization, as many critics say, can not be disclosed from the discursive phenomena about ‘Other’. In this case, Other is the colonized people, which are popularly called the East or the Orient. The Oriental regions of colonization are, apparently, Asia and Africa.
Javanese people, inevitably as part of the East, had been in a long time represented by Dutch, the 350-year-colonizer. The study about Java has been rapidly conducted since 1666 by Francois Valentijn with his encyclopedia about island, birds, the history of java, description about Banten and Batavia, and biography of the general governors. According to Wijayanto, by quoting Ann Kumar’s comparative analysis on Valentijn’s encyclopedia and Serat Centhini, the encyclopedia shows the failures of West Methodology in representing and detailed data about demography can not stage the Javanese people’s complex culture. The traditional Serat Centhini, on the other hand, can show the real Javanese people’s relationship and complexity. Panoramically, the study of Java was institutionally conducted in the founding of Instituut in Surakarta in 1832 and the Java Instituut in 1919. Those two institutions studied Java and produced texts such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, historical books, novels, and even museums.
All the information, apart from its correctness, consciously or not, takes part in forming the life of Javanese people (2006: 38-43).
The same phenomenon occurs in the colonization of Africa. As the effect of long economic and epidermal colonial repression which causes African inferiority, Fanon surprisingly stated that “at the risk of arousing the resentment of my colored brothers, I will say that the black is not a man” (1967: 8). This statement is a challenge to Africans and their Whites-counterpart who are engaged in a complex relation. Another well-known racist recognition of Africans, or Blacks, or Negroes, or Niggers, is that they are the missing link – the ‘inhuman’ being located in the middle of the slow evolution continuum from monkey to human. This Darwinian look is strengthened, for example, by Professor Porot, who stated, as quoted by Fanon, that “primitivism is not a lack of maturity or a marked stoppage in the development of the intellectual psychism. It is a social condition which has reached the limit of its evolution; it is logically adopted to a life different from us” (1963: 301). The intention of this colonialist scientist is not on the African poverty but on the ways of developing theories on Others.
As the conclusion, the words from Said are quite relevant presented here: “the Orient, in short, existed as a set of values attached, not to its modern realities, but to a series of valorized contacts it had had with a distant European past,” (1979: 85).
The anxiety to compare phenomena which occur in post-colonial countries is a positive desire for it will lead to the alertness toward homogenization. S/he who was born in these countries and internationally communicate with Others, will feel the given represented identities, daily and academically. Also, a little bit generalizing, s/he lives in a country of so called undeveloped, or in a smoother term, developing. The bizarre relationship between power and knowledge which has created essences of post-colonial people, and then, of course, the essences will be able to be manipulated, is not two-color understanding. Hence, those essences still need dynamic studies and dynamic resistances for colonization did not come in empty places, but in habitats having certain cultures and traditions. It is parallel to Ania Loomba’s argument that the process of ‘forming a community’ in a new land necessarily meant
unforming or re-forming the communities that existed there already, and
involved a wide range of practices including trade, plunder, negotiation, warfare, genocide, enslavement, and rebellion (2000: 2). As the consequence, related to literature, post-colonial studies “find their defining parameters in history”, meaning that the study of postcolonial literature should include historical data and political matters (Boehmer, 1995: 7).
This thesis is a comparative study on two literary works produced in two postcolonial countries. Despite its unfixed definition, comparative study may be
This research is a comparative study between Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Rumah Kaca and John Maxwell Coetzee’s Disgrace.
Rumah Kaca is the last novel of The Buru Quartet. The former novels are
Bumi Manusia (The Earth of Mankind), Anak Semua Bangsa (Child of All
Nations ), and Jejak Langkah (Footsteps). The reason of choosing the last novel is
firstly caused by my disagreement with Agustinus Budi Permana’s conclusion in his undergraduate thesis entitled Postcolonialism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Rumah Kaca. According to him, the form of resistance in Rumah Kaca is in non-physical or political way. This conclusion is not true since Rumah Kaca also provides acts and scenes of physical form of resistance, such as in Prinses Kasiruta when she makes the members of
De Sweep run away by shooting a gun and the acts of Mas Marco to kill one of De
Sweep member. Still, according to him, the effect of postcolonialism in Heart of
Darkness and Rumah Kaca is similar, that is, the fear of colonizers upon the
natives. I think the problem is not that simple and general, and the constellation of colonial/postcolonial discourse is more complicated. The second reason is Toer’s use of different first person narrator, Pangemanann, a colonial bureaucrat. Compared to the first three novels, which use an intellectual inlander Minke as the narrator, the change arouses anxiety. To help understanding this change, Hilmar Farid’s writing on Toer, as quoted by Agustinus Budi Permana, is necessarily to be presented. In his site, he quoted Toer’s eagerness to write history, but since Toer was afraid of being suspected to falsify history, he chose to novels do not look like “Indonesian History” we (Indonesian people) are familiar with. This statement, of course, needs to be proved, and one way of proving it is to give the narrator’s perspective a counter - a counterfocalization.
Coetzee’s style in Disgrace is vividly different from Toer’s. Disgrace’s authorial persona is presented in third person point of view. Yet, as Anne Longmuir, in her essay, has proven that Coetzee uses limited omniscient narration to tell his story, I started to look at the authorial persona’s depiction of indigenous people. Superficially seeing the similarity of the narrators of Rumah Kaca and
Disgrace , that they are colonialists, triggers me to compare. It is my superficial
reason. The 1994 new democratic South Africa (where the novel takes place) and its complex problematic psyche of how both Black and White South Africans are presented are the most attractive issues to study.
Having looked at how exactly the narrators in the novels are narratively structuralized, the study goes on how the indigenous peoples are represented by the narrators. After that, the other possible perspective(s) will be presented as the counter of representations.
The idea of bringing the counterfocalizations towards a narrative is an attempt to introduce and/or popularize the other perspective(s), to not homogenize the entities of postcolonial society, to lift the indigenous peoples’ knowledge up to intellectual language and property, and to show that indigenous knowledge, though has experienced long colonization, has to be always involved in the reading every present-day postcolonial society.
There are three problems to answer. Those particular problems are: 1. How are the narrative structures of the narrators in Rumah Kaca and
Disgrace constructed? 2.
How are Indigenous Peoples represented by the narrators of Rumah Kaca and Disgrace?
C. Objectives of the Study
Referring to the problem formulations foregrounded, this study will first of all describe the narrative structures of the narrators in Rumah Kaca and Disgrace.
Then, using some evidences conducted in the first step, this comparative study tries to identify the representations on the indigenous people given by the narrators in both novels. Furthermore, I will change the focus of understanding Indigenous Peoples, meaning to counterfocalize the representations.
D. Definition of Terms and Explanation of Proper Names
This part will present the definition of some important terms and explanation of proper names used in this thesis. The proper names are all taken from Javanese wayang: Baladewa and Durna. Out of the two proper names are terms.
Baladewa
Kresna’s Brother, Baladewa, is the king of Mandura. He is very powerful and respected among Ksatriyas. Yet, he is in the side of Kurawa. He is loyal and brave. When the biggest war Baratayuda comes to occur, Kresna tricks him to meditate. When Baratayuda ends, Baladewa follows Pandawa to Astina and takes care of Parikesit (Anderson, 2008: 34; Soetarno, 1994: 39-40).
Counterfocalization
In Gerard Genette’s elaboration on narrative, focalization is the synonym of
perspective (Barry, 2002: 232). The word counter means to say something in
order to try to prove that what someone said was not true; to do something in
order to reduce the bad effect of something, or to defend yourself against them
(Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 2001: 415). Counterfocalization literally means a counter- perspective. I follow Anne Longmuir to use the word when she tried to change Lurie’s perspective on African people and society though she did not clearly state the definition of the word. Yet, I think, the meaning is quite clear.
Discourse
Discourse is all utterances, writings, and beliefs in which the world can be known and understood. In Foucaultian definition, discourse consists of statements directed by unsaid rules, which bears the language of power coordinated through knowledge (Walia, 2003: 80).
Durna
Durna is a Brahmin, witch, and guru. When young, both Pandawa and Kurawa learn from him knowledge and strategy of war. He loves all his students. Yet, when Baratayuda is about to occur, he prefers to be in Kurawa side. He follows Machiavellian morality and automatically be ‘inappropriate’ Ksatriya (He involves himself into the war as Ksatriya). By Kresna’s trick, he is killed by Drestajumena. In his ‘funeral’, both Kurawa and Pandawa give the highest respect and gratitude to him, their guru (Anderson, 2008: 45-46).
Imperialism
Imperialism is not a member of a government or a foreign country. It is a desire to control or influence other nations and countries. It is that ‘big-capital’ which uses their politics of foreign affairs for their own advantages (Soekarno, 1978: 12-14) (my translation).
Indigenous Peoples
The phrase refers to Natives who have been (being) colonized. The letter ‘s’ in ‘peoples’ indicates the natives’ heterogeneity. The words “Indigenous Peoples” appeared around 1970 from the struggle of American Indian Movement and the Canadian Indian Brotherhood (Smith, 2005: xxvi).
Intellectual Property
Property such as an idea, a design, etc. that has been created or invented by somebody but does not exist in physical form (Hornby, 1995: 620). In postcolonial discourse, Intellectual Property plays a great role, especially in the be done to only develop the theory on others. They are also done for promoting researchers’ careers. And, the one who will have the rights for the theory, and often become the final gate for the truth is the researcher – not the Indigenous Peoples.
Mechanistic model
It is a development of Cartesian philosophical view of extreme dualism pattern between material/immaterial. Isaac Newton constructs that philosophy as the base
th
of classic physics. From 17-19 century, Newtonian mechanistic model on nature dominates all scientific thought (Capra, 2004: 11).
Narrative
The simplest definition: that which is narrated; the technique or act of narration in speech or writing (The New Webster International Dictionary of the English Language, 1973: 634).
Print-capitalism
Books, Newspaper, and all printed materials. In Benedict Anderson’s view, print- capitalism plays great role in compiling together peoples to imagine their identity (Loomba, 2000: 186).
Positivism
The West cultural archives state knowledge tradition and practical structure to be based on cultural debate. The definition of research as an objective process, value- free, and scientific in scrutinizing and explaining reality is called positivism (Smith, 2005: 267). In the relation to colonialism, the old generation of Dutch
“objective” and “scientific” by using passive sentence, and considered themselves ‘scijver (the writer) in order to make the readers believe in the illusion that “text talks by itself” (Sweeney, 2005:xiii).
Postcolonial literature
It is writing that critically scrutinizes the colonial relationship. It is writing that sets out in one way or another to resist colonialist perspectives. As well as a change in power, decolonization demands symbolic overhaul, a reshaping of dominant meanings. Postcolonial literature formed part of that process of overhaul (Boehmer, 1995:3).
Representation
An example or expression of something; A typical of something. To represent means to show an image of something. Hence, conscequently, representation could be an image of something (Hornby, 1995: 994). studies conducted on the works of Coetzee and Toer, and the position of the present study among those critical writings. The second part is the review on related theories. It is the description of theories used as the knife to surge the works. The last part is the theoretical framework. It is the explanation of the contribution of the theories reviewed in solving the problems formulated in this study.
This part contains six studies conducted by different critics. Four essays on Coetzee’s Disgrace and two writings on Toer’s Rumah Kaca will be presented.
All those studies chosen are related to the study conducted in this paper: the structure of narrative, representation, and counterfocalization.
The first writing on Disgrace reviewed in this chapter is the one conducted by Anne Longmuir focusing on how the story are told and, hence, how the meaning can be grasped. Furthermore, she gave a counterfocalization related to the way Africa is seen by the narrator. The second one is the essay conducted by a researcher in romanticism, Margot Beard, revealing the role of two poets who are present in the novel. Generally, the study deals with how a person installs certain Rosemarie Buikema. It relates the novel to the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation of South Africa Report) and reveals the uneasiness of building a diversity-in- community nation in South Africa. The last one is the writing done by Michael S.
Kochin. It deals with the humanity and universalism that considerably reach their endings. Yet, Kochin still found hopes on some actions done by certain characters, especially which are related to arts, including the novel itself.
The first study, which is conducted by Anne Longmuir, entitled Coetzee’s
Disgrace , is a respond to Salman Rushdie, who said that Disgrace merely
become(s) a part of the African darkness described (2007: 119-121). It is also done in accordance with the defense given by critic Gayatri Cakravorty Spivak which points out that the use of limited omniscient narration by Coetzee results in the protagonist, middle-aged academic David Lurie’s vision about Africa. Going further, Anne Longmuir tries to, as Spivak suggests, counterfocalize Lurie’s perspective about Africa.
Anne Longmuir’s short essay presents an act depicting Lurie’s limited vision and colonial assumption of Africa: the act of three Africans’ gang-raping Lucy. During the invasion, Lurie was locked in the bathroom and left to mourn his fate. Lurie was placed parallel to Aunt Sally, a figure from a cartoon, a missionary in cassock and topi waiting with clasped hands and upcast eyes while the savages jaw away in their lingo preparatory to plunging him into their boiling cauldron (Coetzee, 1999: 95). The mourning continued, and the narrator wrote:
Mission work: what has it left behind, that huge interprise of upliftment? Nothing he can see. (95)
This speech, Longmuir argues, is a clear instance of the limited omniscient narration identified by critics like Spivak. Those thoughts are Lurie’s, not those of some omniscient third-person narrator. Moreover, Lurie misread the colonization of Africa as a “huge interprise of upliftment.” He placed himself as a victim of savagery of the dark continent, Africa, just as “Aunt Sally”, “an object of unreasonable or prejudiced attack.”
Longmuir concludes that Coetzee reminds the readers of the legacy of colonization and apartheid. Coetzee’s vision of South Africa, Longmuir says, may be bleak, but it never flinches from contextualizing and historicizing the action of the characters. The attacks on Lucy and the farm, Longmuir continues, do not signal lawlessness in postapartheid South Africa but is a product of centuries of domination.
The second research is Margot Beard’s Lesson from the Dead Masters:
Wordsworth and Byron in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
(http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.matc.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=2&hid=8&sid=9398b 3d8-92e4-41a7-a849-a76612ba75da%40SRCSM1). As a researcher whose interests lie in the field of romanticism, most especially Wordsworth and Byron, Margot Beard was obviously intrigued by J.M. Coetzee’s juxtaposition of those antagonistic figures. According to him, most critics, as he quoted and criticized, gave inadequate readings on the significance of the poets in the novel. He argued that the appearance of romantic nuance in Disgrace, the troubled early decades of nineteenth-century Europe with the writers’ questioning and rejection of centuries-old power structures and authority figures, can “speak to present-day South Africans.”
Beard states that, despite the differences between them and the vast cultural and historical differences between nineteenth-century Europe and late twentieth-century South Africa, Wordsworth and Byron “imaginatively face up to the difficulties underlying human relations as well as the complex interaction with the world we all live in.” Beard lists the major dichotomies which stem from the juxtaposition of Wordsworth and Byron. He argued that
Coetzee uses the dichotomies both to structure the novel and to sharpen the issues for they foreground the quintessentially Romantic interest in the paradoxical oppositions which lie at the heart of the fully experienced life (2007: 62).
Beard seems to warn the binary opposition which is potentially done to represent certain different people with different cultures and philosophies. The oppositions of things are paradoxical since they both occur in the life, “the fully experienced life”.
Lurie, the protagonist and anti-hero, misread those poets and wore the misreading in all his feeling and his deeds. Disgrace, according to Beard, argues that Romanticism is not a Eurocentric throwback, something to be rejected in the reading of post-colonial South Africa. Instead, the novel addresses the major proposition of Romanticism which is, as he summarized, the essential nature of creative imagination.
The third essay reviewed is Rosemarie Buikema’s Literature and the
Production of Ambiguous Memory: Confession and Double Thoughts in Coetzee’s
(http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.matc.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=1&hid=22&sid=298c 573b-8ae7-4484-a663-ebe51949fb1c%40SRCSM1). It focuses on the motives of confessions presented in the novel and how Disgrace helps understand the otherness as a community-building project of culture.
Relating the appearance of Disgrace (1999) to the five-volume Truth and Reconciliation of South Africa Report a year before, Rosemarie Buikema pessimistically responds Bishop Tutu’s ideal dream of a rainbow nation. The problem, according to her, is more complicated. To build a diversity-in- community nation is not an easy task.
Buikema divides her essay into four parts, relating them to the present-day condition of society in South Africa. The first part of Buikema’s essay focuses on the ambiguous truth in confession. Buikema took Coetzee’s reading on Rosseau that “the confession is not infrequently meant to gain sympathy, love, and acceptance from the listener and/or reader.” Subsequently, she takes Coetzee’s suggestion in an analysis of Dostoevsky’s fictional confessions and explains that truth “appears only in the light of death or the eye of God, at the moment in which the confession is no longer aimed at self-preservation.” In a secular world, she concludes, the relationship between confession and truth is already problematical in definition.
The second is the act of Luri’s trial. The trial is composed by people having political power to get a confession from Lurie about his affair. Lurie, expected to exonerate himself before the committee of inquiry which consists of confesses guilty and refuses amnesty, forgiveness, and exoneration. Buikema related Lurie’s deed to the book Communication 101 in which language functions as a means of exchange, and concluded that the book Lurie uses to teach his students has little effect. Language, in here, according to Buikema, can not reveal the deepest motives in unambiguous way, and also not to express remorse.
The third part is given title Petrus’ trial. This part takes a long events starting from the move of Lurie to Lucy’s small home, the three Africans’ criminal act of raping Lucy, to the denial attitude of Petrus about his relatives’ deed. Petrus, Buikema argued, adopts the attitude of black man who says: a black man cannot be guilty towards a white man for the coming fifty years.
The fourth part is entitled Imagination and nation-building. Here, Buikema interpreted the action of Luri’s confession in front of Melanie’s parents as the allegory of white men’s confession to the blacks. Lurie, after having experienced ‘Disgrace’ when Lucy was raped, easily perceived the blacks’ anger to the whites. In Disgrace, Buikema concludes that
Coetze shows how literature in particular can represent and understand the otherness of the other as something withdraws at unexpected moments and in unexpected ways from the community-building project of culture (2006: 195).
The fourth research is conducted by Michael S. Kochin entitled
Postmetaphysical Literature: Reflections on J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. This
research was taken from Wilson Web, winter 2004, volume 33. The novel is seen from a political science perspective.
Michael S. Kochin states that Disgrace is a disturbing book which depicts main characters (Lurie, Lucy, Petrus, and Melanie) are the result of distinctive human possibilities of a living world, the end of romance of worth living in plurality.
Kochin argues that there are different moral standards between University and the world outside and there is a gap between moral standards towards humans and towards animals. Yet, Disgrace is a novel of beginnings, not just of endings, and to understand the novel’s sense “we must seek out intimations of freedom.” Those intimations are, according to him, grounds for hope. Deriving the fate of the main characters in the novel, Kochin makes a distinction of hope possessed by those characters. The first is for those whom
there is little hope. Lurie and Lucy are included in this category. Lurie, after
having been left by Soraya, prosecuted by his student whom he ever made affair with, and kicked out of the university, went to Lucy’s home in rural area. He made love with neckless Bev, one who was far from the image of beautiful Eros ought to serve. Moreover, Lurie had to experience the moment of Africans gang- raping Lucy, the moment of rejection done by Lucy to go away from the tribal place, and failure to bring the rape case to court. Hence, to survive in those changing place, Lurie sank himself to art, continuing his project on Byron in an
empty hope. Lucy had the same fate. Yet, this fate was consciously chosen due to
irrational reason. Lucy kept alive the baby she was carrying and accepted the
offer from Petrus to be his third wife. Lucy kept continuing her life in no vision of bright future.
The second category is those for whom there is hope. Petrus and Melanie were included here. Petrus, strongly presumed involved in the case of rapping Lucy, successfully took Lucy’s land and made her his wife. The second character having hope is Melanie. After going out from the university, and lost in somewhere (the narrator does not tell), Lucy went back to the realm of theatre and became a successful actor.
However, Kochin still argued that there is still a thin hope for us represented by Melanie’s play, Lurie’s opera, and the novel of Disgrace. He continued that
This hope is that we can be redeemed by an art that demonstrates the futility of our cultural inheritance and thereby frees us from the need to seek to live it. There is the thin hope offered by rethinking our relation to animals (2004: 8).