The Shadowed White: The Fall of the White Subject and the Displaced Center in J. M. Coetzee's 《Disgrace》

• Main Authors: Chia-ling Chen, 陳佳伶
• Other Authors: Hsien-hao Liao
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/33741583631993048987

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 外國語文學系研究所 === 91 === In Disgrace as in Coetzee’s other novels, the author poses metaphysical challenges against the Manichean paradigm that backs the scheme of the colonial project as the "civilizing mission." The distabilizing of the binary supposition of subject and other underlies the structure of this novel, where the white subjects in the postcolonial South Africa become the objectified colonized. The first chapter is an introduction of the context of the novel and the main ideas of my thesis. In the second chapter I will look into the change of the subject position of the whites with Lacanian theories of the Real. The reversal of the roles of the oppressor and the oppressed illustrates the lack in the colonial system where social disturbances have subdued the white characters--David Lurie and Lucy-- to an impossible ethics of the real. In the third chapter, Lucy’s reconciliation with the black violators constitutes an irony that turns the story into a political allegory. Coetzee interrogates the essence of colonization with a mimic oppressive patriarchal system operated by violence and economic interests. I will analyze this novel in the light of form and meaning as a political allegory. In the fourth chapter, the question of identity and other that underlies the decolonizing attempt of post-colonial literature is of focus. Coetzee’s viewpoint about the internal displacement of colonial violence implicates the loss of ethics in the Post-Apartheid South African society. In conclusion, I will look into the factors why Disgrace harbors a revolutionary momentum with an impossible perspective, a difficult insight represented by the persecuted whites, Lucy in particular. It is therefore a path-breaking experiment on the part of the author and to the post-colonial literary arena as well.