Political (Under) Currents in Coetzee's Disgrace.

Abstract

Taking as point of departure the essay “Westernization/Eurocentric Discourse” by Jude N. Uwalaka, this paper argues that Coetzee, in his novel Disgrace, is making a subtle comment on the political possibilities for South Africa in the post-Apartheid era. An exploration of his characters shows that they can be read as metonymic representations and allegories of the social forces in post-Apartheid South Africa: Lurie represents the Eurocentric approach and the failure of its agenda, Pollux represents Afrocentrism and Lucy and Petrus embody a new hybrid identity for South Africa. The conclusion reached is that Coetzee ultimately rejects both the Africanist and the purely Eurocentric agendas, moving beyond the scopes of Négritude and Post-Africanism, to suggest that the future of South Africa (and by extension, Africa at large) does not lie in a return to anti-western Africanism and an idealised tribal past, nor in an exclusively Eurocentric westernisation at the expense of the African identity, but in a hybridisation between European modernity and African heritage.