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Still on Disgrace
I’m not entirely sure why the essayist
would expect my response to his work to be arranged along the
borders of “reading” Disgrace.
I have stated that it is not my intention to defend Coetzee
against the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism. When
we arrogate to ourselves the right to speak for a writer in
ways that actively occlude the writer, there is then indeed
no balm in Gilead.
I argue against placing Coetzee as a Europhilic writer because
to do so is simply to subject his works to the worst excesses
of a historicizing reading praxis. To pin down Disgrace
in this manner is, I believe, to familiarize (and/or
render knowable) those features of Coetzee’s writing that
discomfort and perplex his readers, such that the import of
the alienating process is completely lost.
I use the word “believe” deliberately: the essayist
suggests negativity in the process of belief, while ignoring
the cultural origin of all belief: to read is to interpret,
and we interpret according to particular cultural signs, so
that is pretty much a moot point.
Let us turn, then, to the notion that Coetzee is Europhilic.
I argue that Coetzee’s work certainly participates within
literary traditions that extend beyond the African, but the
same could be said for any writer. Are we to dismiss all works
that “write back” to European texts, then? Coetzee’s
writing may draw on Beckett and Kafka for inspiration (to put
it crudely), but surely that is because the disruptions of 20th
century Europe had direct implications for the state of affairs
in South Africa?
Is Coetzee simply Europhilic? He is a white South African writing
in English, and translating from other languages. He uses Western
intellectual discourses to problematize South African political
relations. Does this make him “Europhilic”? Why
the pejorative view of European affiliation? Coetzee’s
works are no more implicated in Europeanism than that of any
writer who has undergone the colonial experience. Certainly,
to raise the cudgel against South African literature for engaging
with European contexts is to miss the close links between the
two contexts. In any event, when we dismiss Coetzee in ways
that are distinctly anachronistic, we miss out on new ways of
reading, new ways of understanding the ethical dimensions of
the reading project that do not ignore how the South African
position is a manifestation of a wider historical position.
I propose that in Disgrace, Coetzee is not
advocating a solipsistic concern with the self: He is problematizing
the position. Further, he is problematizing the nature of positions,
and their inscriptive function.
And this is precisely where logocentric analysis slips on the
glaze of textual subtlety: in insisting on realist representation,
such a mode fails to note that the text is just that: a representation.
The false foregrounding of history is something Coetzee has
always argued against: it has no more authority than any other
form of storytelling. I argue against such a mode of reading
because it by its very nature presupposes a causal relationship
between history and literature, ignoring altogether the nuanced
relationship between ethics and literature.
The last paragraph is unfortunate in its use of ad hominem.
How to respond to this? My reading is not uncritical, nor is
it meant to displace the essayist’s reading of the text:
I am fully aware that in opposing the essayist’s reading
I appeal to another discourse. Disregarding the slight whiff
of tu-quoqism, I think that it is a mistake to try to confine
Coetzee to any particular version of structuralism. Coetzee’s
conflict between structure and history is far from confined
to Europe or European discourse, despite the rather mysterious
nature of its correspondence with European writing traditions
and theories.
Of course, it is unfortunate that in writing this I encounter
a rather pre-formed position, where what I articulate will be
read as “fan resistance”, rather than a call for
a more nuanced engagement with the text that seeks answers within
it, rather than attempting to see what the text is saying through
the gaze of other works.
Wamuwi Mbao, Rhodes University, Grahamstown,
South Africa. 22nd October, 2007
Response from Essayist:
Mbao's response,
however, is hardly a reading of either Coetzee's Disgrace
or his writing generally. He has not shown, as he sets out to
do, that Coetzee is anti-Coetzee - in other words, that Coetzee
is not Europhilic as the writer himself has repeatedly demonstrated
in his fiction and nonfiction. What Mbao has done is to state
his own belief in and about Coetzee's writing, just as many believe
in God though they fail to explain His nature. Mbao also advocates
for a move beyond what he calls "the restrictions of logocentric
analysis," but again fails to explain what it is or what
is wrong with it.
Mbao's reading exhibits a common symptom in literary dialectic
which may be described as "fan resistances." In effect,
whatever the critic says about the "lack" of a famed
creative writer, the doting fan cries out in speech act phatic
retort: "logocentrism ... logocentrism." As I said in
the note to "South African Hunger," my forthcoming essay
on “Secret/aries of In(san)ity: J. M. Coetzee’s Male/diction”
will attempt a definitive reading of Coetzee’s “intellectual
allegiance” to western alienists.
Obiwu 19th October, 2007
Mis-reading Disgrace
I am not writing to defend Disgrace
[South African Hunger and Literary Excess;
Obiwu,  ,
Oct/Nov ]. I feel that such debates have been done to desiccation,
and in any event Coetzee’s works and investment in literature
are an able defence in themselves. I must say, however, that
I find branding Coetzee as Europhilic to be reflective of a
rather odd reading praxis.
After all, Coetzee himself has stated unequivocally
that his “intellectual allegiances are clearly European,
not African.” This might be considered a damning self-indictment,
until one sees him (as he sees himself) as a
“late representative of the vast movement
of European expansion that took place from the sixteenth century
to the mid twentieth century of the Christian era, a movement
that more or less achieved its purpose of conquest and settlement
in the Americas and Australasia, but failed totally in Asia
and almost totally in Africa.”
To impute a blind immersion in European writing
from this is to miss the nuanced and informed position from
which Coetzee articulates his political position in the world.
Far from seeking a glory that never was, grounded in a “Europhilic”
tradition on the liminal boundaries of South African life, Coetzee’s
works show that the history of the arts is a history of unceasing
cross-fertilization across fences and boundaries.
As for the claim that Disgrace
exhibits a hegemonic lycanthropy, let us remember that at the
heart of Coetzee’s concern with animals and their relationships
with humans is a belief in the ethical responsibility to the
other. While it is not my place to generalise from my own limited
particular to the greater whole, I’m fairly certain that
David Lurie’s Disgrace is not Kurtz’s disgrace,
humbled by the depravity and animalism of a dark continent,
but the failure to love, to envision the other as an other,
if you will.
What do I mean by this? I am saying that Coetzee’s
concern is not with escaping ethical responsibility by wrapping
his novel in the comforting folds of Europhilia, but with mapping
a particular white middle-class position. In a world where dehumanisation
and inequality are still very prevalent, Coetzee suggests that
if fraternity and love are to have any meaning or efficacy,
they must be selfless. This selflessness is shown in Lurie’s
dealings with the dogs: his failure is one of being unable to
negotiate the fine line of complicity and implication which
Coetzee himself treads so well.
In any event, all this is very removed from my
actual point, which is that intellectualising Disgrace
in this manner removes the importance of the corporeal: I advocate
a move beyond the restrictions of logocentric analysis, towards
a reading of Coetzee that takes full cognisance of its place
(and the place of South African writing in general) in a wider
historical context.
Wamuwi Mbao, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South
Africa. 11th October, 2007
Nike Adesuyi is Changing
The poet and literary activist Nike
Adesuyi used to be as acessible as the poet Niyi Osundare
— at least writing in the Nigerian Newspapers — but
with what she has on your website she has left some of her admirers
behind, I find her poems, relatively speaking, unusually challenging.
Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth, Essex, England. 17th October,
2007
Reactions to 's
Debut.
Achievement
Congratulations on the launch of
African Writing. This is an amazing achievement on your part. It
is also a momentous occasion for Africa, Africans, and writers all
over the world. This is a cause for great celebration.
Jennifer Fielding, Said Business School. UK
Bias against Kola Boof and Calixthe Beyala
I am writing you to say thank you for acknowledging [the
work of Kola Boof, included in your 50 African Writers List] but
to say that I noticed that hers, along with Calixthe Beyala's profiles
are the only two that mention any 'negative' aspects of their careers.
I would like to thank you again for this,
because you have pointed me out to the two females that are probably
saying things that I will not hear from the African mainstream.
But as an editor of a magazine for women of colour at the University
of Pennsylvania, I thought I should let you know that I sensed a
bias here. Peace.
Ashley Alexis McFarlane, Communications, UPenn '08, US
What a Harvest
Thoughtful and rich, as usual. Well done. African Writing
is a gift. A new clarion for the silenced, a new haven for the dis/mis-placed.
We thank you for it.
Niyi Osundare, USA.
Congratulations
Congratulations on the debut of African Writing
and thanks for a wealth of engaging essays and stories. I particularly
liked Chuma Nwokolo’s brilliant whodunit and Ikhide’s
frank review, speaking of which the cartoon credited to Agosto does
have an Ikhide ring to it… love it. Hopefully, someday soon
someone will give us an excellent work on the migrant experience
that packs some kind of tragic humour.
Olu Oguibe, USA
Monkey Love and Death of a Poem
I haven’t read any poems by Harry Garuba in a very
long while, but while love still happily engages the poet, these
two poems would seem a departure from his extremely lyrical, evocative,
impassioned poems in Shadow and Dream, especially
so in his unpublished collection, Season of Rains.
It is great to notice that Harry Garuba the poet has grown and become
comfortable enough with his craft to speak in a voice shorn of artifice.
He has always advocated being simple without being simplistic. These
poems speak these qualities. I miss his lush lyricism in these poems
though.
Nike Adesuyi, Nigeria.
Where is Tsitsi Dangambera!!
Your magazine "African-Writing.Com" is quite amazing and
much needed. Thank you! I was very happy to read your 50 African
Writers list but you did not include Tsitsi Dangambera!!
Shame.
Dustin Brandywine, UK
Editor's Note: The list was limited to
writers born after 1960 - which let out the talented Tsitsi
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