죄의 알레고리인가, 알레고리의 죄인가? —쿳시의 『치욕』과 재현의 정치학
An Allegory of Sin, or a Sin of Allegory?: Coetzee's Disgrace and the Politics of Representation
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J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace is no less controversial than his previous works for its usual vague politics and employment of problematic racial/gender discourses. The novel evolves around two sexual incidents: One is David Lurie's relationship with Melanic Isaacs, a colored student of his, and the other is three blacks' violation of Lucy, Lurie's daughter. Lurie finds himself facing a sexual harassment charge as a consequence of a sexual relationship with his Romantics student. At an inquiry, Lurie, without hesitation, pleads guilty as charged but refuses to offer an apology or show any sign of repentance. This puzzling behavior of Lurie's is understood by not a few critics as allusive to those of the white perpetrators of racial discrimination at the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As puzzling as Lurie's bearing at the inquiry is Lucy's dealing with the gang rape and its consequences. Quite a few researchers read Lucy's enigmatic behaviors in a racial context, that is, as an allegory of the price the whites are expected to pay for continuous residency in a new post-apartheid South Africa. Unlike the second sexual incident, the significances of the first incident, this paper argues, are yet to be accounted for. Thus, by specifically probing into the allegorical dimension to the first sexual incident, this paper answers such questions as why the male protagonist forms an all-risking scandalous relationship with his student, and why he refuses to issue any public apology despite his immediate acceptance of guilt. The paper argues that the enigma can be explained when viewed in the political context of a specific political/ethnic group, that is, the liberal white South Africans. In other words, the politically and morally ambiguous situation in which the liberal whites found themselves during the era of apartheid, is behind Lurie's self-contradictory acts of pleading guilty, yet refusing to repent, and also of violating the professional ethics code, yet at times defending himself in the name of individual rights. The conclusion of this paper is that while, by encoding the South African racial relations in sexual terms, Coetzee was able to add another significant and sophisticated allegorical dimension to his crime-and-punishment-like narrative, this achievement entailed a liability for violating the sexual Other in the realm of representation.
Abstract
J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace is no less controversial than his previous works for its usual vague politics and employment of problematic racial/gender discourses. The novel evolves around two sexual incidents: One is David Lurie's relationship with Melanic Isaacs, a colored student of his, and the other is three blacks' violation of Lucy, Lurie's daughter. Lurie finds himself facing a sexual harassment charge as a consequence of a sexual relationship with his Romantics student. At an inquiry, Lurie, without hesitation, pleads guilty as charged but refuses to offer an apology or show any sign of repentance. This puzzling behavior of Lurie's is understood by not a few critics as allusive to those of the white perpetrators of racial discrimination at the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As puzzling as Lurie's bearing at the inquiry is Lucy's dealing with the gang rape and its consequences. Quite a few researchers read Lucy's enigmatic behaviors in a racial context, that is, as an allegory of the price the whites are expected to pay for continuous residency in a new post-apartheid South Africa. Unlike the second sexual incident, the significances of the first incident, this paper argues, are yet to be accounted for. Thus, by specifically probing into the allegorical dimension to the first sexual incident, this paper answers such questions as why the male protagonist forms an all-risking scandalous relationship with his student, and why he refuses to issue any public apology despite his immediate acceptance of guilt. The paper argues that the enigma can be explained when viewed in the political context of a specific political/ethnic group, that is, the liberal white South Africans. In other words, the politically and morally ambiguous situation in which the liberal whites found themselves during the era of apartheid, is behind Lurie's self-contradictory acts of pleading guilty, yet refusing to repent, and also of violating the professional ethics code, yet at times defending himself in the name of individual rights. The conclusion of this paper is that while, by encoding the South African racial relations in sexual terms, Coetzee was able to add another significant and sophisticated allegorical dimension to his crime-and-punishment-like narrative, this achievement entailed a liability for violating the sexual Other in the realm of representation.
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