Rivaling History, Refusing Charity: Contest of Ethics and Politics in J. M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K
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A Booker Prize winner in 1983, J. M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K has long attracted critical attention for introducing a protagonist who seemed unresponsive to the gravity of the historical situation and even lacking an awareness of himself. A seminal work in Coetzee's early fictional output, it has been at the center of a heated debate between art and history or ethics and politics. While Coetzee has often been accused of evading the question of the writer's responsibility in urgent historical times, a close examination of his works reveal that he has been acutely sensitive to the demands of history. This essay reads Life and Times of Michael K as an imaginative investigation of the very structures which produce and perpetuate injustices in history and human relations. Critics have claimed that the protagonist's passivity and tendency to withdraw from society convey a negation of history. However, the silent, negative responses of Michael K are an expression both of a fierce resistance to authority and a profound desire for individual freedom and self-determination. By choosing to remain silent and refusing to become part of the colonial project or an object of institutional charity, Michael rivals history by exposing the fundamental dishonesty in human associations. The novel is also an important work in Coetzee's oeuvre as it reveals his unique ethical sensibility to the act of fictional writing. As a writer acutely sensitive about the responsibility of the author and the authority wielded in writing about the other, Coetzee pays attention to the problem of interpreting the otherness of Michael K and makes it a key formal consideration. Michael K's refusal to supply a story for a guilt-stricken narrator is used to pass judgment on the white obsession to contain the other in the narrative act. Rather than being preoccupied with its own elusiveness, Coetzee's novel succeeds in championing the autonomy of the marginal other, both on the literal and metafictional dimensions. Thus, Life and Times of Michael K is a prime example of Coetzee's concern with the ethical act of writing and the complicity of the author in the project of subordinating the marginal figures of society.
Abstract
A Booker Prize winner in 1983, J. M. Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K has long attracted critical attention for introducing a protagonist who seemed unresponsive to the gravity of the historical situation and even lacking an awareness of himself. A seminal work in Coetzee's early fictional output, it has been at the center of a heated debate between art and history or ethics and politics. While Coetzee has often been accused of evading the question of the writer's responsibility in urgent historical times, a close examination of his works reveal that he has been acutely sensitive to the demands of history. This essay reads Life and Times of Michael K as an imaginative investigation of the very structures which produce and perpetuate injustices in history and human relations. Critics have claimed that the protagonist's passivity and tendency to withdraw from society convey a negation of history. However, the silent, negative responses of Michael K are an expression both of a fierce resistance to authority and a profound desire for individual freedom and self-determination. By choosing to remain silent and refusing to become part of the colonial project or an object of institutional charity, Michael rivals history by exposing the fundamental dishonesty in human associations. The novel is also an important work in Coetzee's oeuvre as it reveals his unique ethical sensibility to the act of fictional writing. As a writer acutely sensitive about the responsibility of the author and the authority wielded in writing about the other, Coetzee pays attention to the problem of interpreting the otherness of Michael K and makes it a key formal consideration. Michael K's refusal to supply a story for a guilt-stricken narrator is used to pass judgment on the white obsession to contain the other in the narrative act. Rather than being preoccupied with its own elusiveness, Coetzee's novel succeeds in championing the autonomy of the marginal other, both on the literal and metafictional dimensions. Thus, Life and Times of Michael K is a prime example of Coetzee's concern with the ethical act of writing and the complicity of the author in the project of subordinating the marginal figures of society.
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