Gendered sexual violence and complicity: A Postcolonial study of selected works by J. M. Coetzee

Abstract

Colonial expansionism has a legacy with continuing effects in the modern era, and Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee’s works are nuanced fictional responses to that legacy. In this dissertation, I analyse the trajectory of the legacy of the colonial/ imperial era for gender-based violence, violence against women representing racially and ethnically oppressed groups as portrayed in three novels: Dusklands (1974), Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) and Disgrace (1999). I discuss how the representation of these matters might possibly change when Coetzee writes about earlier historical periods compared to more contemporary ones. My analysis shows that patriarchal and imperial power and sexual oppression together with sexual fantasies in connection with power are often depicted in a subtle psychological manner in Coetzee’s works. The offensive mistreatment of women by male characters in the novels exhibits pathological strands in patriarchy. In the novels, this pathology is related to gendered sexualised violence but it relates also to the larger theme of colonial and imperial domination and the refusal to acknowledge the colonised others’ rights. In the novels, gender-based sexual violence is repeatedly related to the male characters’ incapacity to connect to, and ultimately feel sympathy for, the other. It evinces their monstrous, flawed humanity. They take the idea of their racial superiority as granted. Coetzee’s novels persistently portray the psychological deadlock in which white supremacist characters who are associated with colonial/imperial power find themselves. This psychological deadlock of patriarchy, the colonial expansionism, and the inhumanity of colonial/ imperial ideology represented in the male characters in the novels invite the reader to follow these themes. In the first two novels, gender-based violence happens at the time of colonial expansion, and in the third it is the legacy of the white supremacy era, continuously creating problems. In a similar manner, the notions of confession, complicity and historical guilt are also analysed. After all, the crimes of the past, and the era of colonial expansionism, affect the heirs of the colonisers.