Slow Men: A Disabilities Studies Case for the Novels of J. M. Coetzee (second section)

II) Where Disabilities Studies Shares Coetzee’s Reading of Truth

While representations of disabled bodies is important, at the core of the discourse of disabilities studies is an interpretation that goes beyond fiction, into the analysis of determining the construction of identity and meaning. When looking at the novels of Coetzee and its post-colonial nature, how he addresses the colonizers resembles very much Thomas’ critique of the heteronormative societal structure. Thomas incorporates this in her analysis of disabled bodies and how they are both based on a societal relationships as well as how they attempt to destabilize those relationships, writing, “In accordance with postmodernism’s premise that the margin constitutes the center, I probe the peripheral so as to view the whole in a fresh way” (Thomas 6). The center she addresses applies to the able-bodied majority as well the role of the colonizers. With its role bringing into questions societal relationships, it then expands the discourse of disabilities studies into a discussion of how and where disabled bodies and the lens of disability studies develops its context. She then writes,

In a world increasingly seen as free from divine determinism and subject to individual control, the disabled figure calls into question such concepts as will, ability, progress, responsibility, and free agency, notions around which people in a liberal society organize their identities. (Thomas 47)

In a very poststructuralist manner, what the goal for disabilities studies is has more to do with questioning the structured order oppose to making determinations of what is absolute, or true. Post-Colonial studies also has an approach to language and discourse involving truth or the absolute when looking at contributions of the colonizers. In his essay, Colonialism and the Novels of J.M. Coetzee, Stephan Watson attempts to bridge the gap between Coetzee’s take on truth and meaning while also exploring what Coetzee is trying to accomplish regarcding Post-Colonial studies as follows:

If, for instance, one searches inside [his novels], examining their structure, one discovers little more than an artfully constructed void. At the heart of Coetzee’s heart of the country, there is nothing. The solid core to his work lies elsewhere, outside the works themselves, in something that is effaced, implicit, barely alluded to. (Watson, 377)

The outside, suggesting the margins. For Coetzee, establishing the center is not as important listening to the voices on the margins. Characters like Michael K and Paul become the voice of the silent, the marginalized, focused on finding meaning in a world where they are not accepted. To investigate what their identity politically signifies, a closer of analysis of their relationship to the outside world will help show how their role as the marginalized provides a case for a critique of “the center” seen in disabilities studies, slightly alluding to Post-Colonial studies as well. In this section, a closer analysis of the characters will attempt to show how Coetzee’s novels, as well as his characters, become representative of marginalized voices, as in the case of disabled bodies, which focus on criticizing the established order and questioning the role of truth in the way that disabilities studies does with the hegemony of an able-bodied society.

Referring back to Thomas, she writes,

My purpose here is to alter the terms and expand our understanding of the cultural construction of bodies and identity be reframing “disability” as another culture-bound physically justified difference to consider along with race, gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality. (Thomas 5)

What this establishes when looking at Coetzee’s characters is a type of agency that allows the lens of disabilities studies to focus on their role against the outside world.

Looking back at Coetzee’s Foe, questioning what constitutes truth and the authority of books, or knowledge, has in the world becomes a large factor in Coetzee’s attempts to question the authority books knowledge have over people. In a discussion between Susan Barton and a character named Cruso, she suggests to him the importance of sharing his story with the rest of the world. He responds by saying, “the booksellers will hire a man to set your story to rights, and put a dash of colour too, here and there…their trade is in books, not in truth” (Foe, 40). This allusion to truth, more accurately targeting history books, challenges the role of the knowledge that is being passed down from reader to reader as well as calls into question what is the purpose of such books. When applying a disability studies lens to this, it suggests that this manipulation of truth, knowledge and information may be responsible for creating the hetero-normative hierarchy everyone subliminally follows. Watson essay takes this one step further when looking at the role of the colonizers and truth. He writes,

If colonialism, at its simplest, equals the conquest and subjugation of a territory by alien people, then the human relationship that is basic to it is likewise one of power and powerlessness: the relationship between master and servant, overlord and slave. It is this aspect of colonialism that receives the most extensive treatment in Ceotzee’s fiction. (Watson, 370)

The relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is subject to becoming one that makes the call of who is in power and who is not, wielding the authority of what must be for the sake of those in power. The able-bodied, the authors oh history and the colonizer all develop what is to be determined as how things will be in order to maintain to power distribution in order. It is why Coetzee writes the way he does; to subvert those power relations in order to directly show how people live the way they do.

When looking at the role of Michael K and how Coetzee challenges what is considered truth, his reading of marginalized people becomes essential as he looks at how those people have been placed in the world. This further explored Coetzee’s play in truth as it tries to bring voices of the unheard to light. He describes seeing the bodies of people as follows: “Now they have camps for children who run away, camps for people who kick and foam at the mouth, camps for people with big heads and people with little heads…Perhaps the truth is that it is enough to be out of the camps at the same time” (Life and Times, 182). The role of Michael K, when it comes to making claims about who is on the outskirts and who in at the center, is not that of the arbiter who makes decisions but of someone who can see those divisions as problematic or disenfranchising to people. He then decides to subvert this by choosing to refuse to be a part of any type of division. Watson, in his essay, also explores where meaning lies when it comes to be coming subjugated by labels. He writes, “If indeed there is a dominant moral impulse at work in Coetzee’s novels, it is to be found in the insatiable hunger of all his protagonists for ways of escape from a role which condemns them as subjects to confront others as objects in interminable, murderous act of self-division” (Watson, 378). Looking at this quote and applying to the role of Michael K, it suggests that Michael K, along with other characters, become avatars for challenging the authority of rules which thereby divides people based on arbitrary decisions. It is not just something that is a part of them, but, as Watson suggests, is a duty Coetzee assigns   that makes characters like Michael K to question boundaries in his works.

When it comes to Paul and the interpretation of truth, it is not so much what he does with truth, but how, and from whom, he receives it and chooses to follow it. A character named Elizabeth Costello plays a significant role when it comes to him learning about what it means to make meaning of the world. He is assisted and directed by her to represent what is good poetry and how he can accomplish this goal. At the end of the novel, when Elizabeth Costello proposes to Paul to move in with her in order for her to take care of him, he suddenly refuses. Whether or not this was the best choice for Paul, what makes this act so significant is its potential to become a chance for Paul to rid himself of her control and rules. She stands in as not only the normate, someone for Paul to work with to highlight his difference, but also as a source of what is considered to be knowledge and someone to establish the set of rules to live by. His dismissal of her becomes Paul’s dismissal of the need to have a set of guidelines to live by in order to hopefully assimilate back into his status as a normative person. In Watson’s essay, he further reads into Coetzee’s characters and how they choose to be. He writes,

[…]It would seem to be part of the essence of their position that they often cannot decide in favor of one or other mode of being. If they choose contemplation, history will not cease to remind them of their irresponsibility or guilt. If they decide to act, to enter history, the world of being that they have necessarily left behind will continue to be present to them in the form of an inner hollowness. (Watson 385)

When applied to Paul, this passage tries to capture what Paul desires, which is to not be forced to make a decision, but to be able to openly question through opinion or action the role of truth and why he must abide by the conditions truth establishes. Paul did not choose to be in an accident, but with his state of being, he gains the opportunity to make whatever he wishes of it by having him decide what to do after leaving Elizabeth for however long it takes. For Coetzee, Paul becomes a character who finds solace in the absence of truth since his experience with the incident and with Elizabeth Costello are his to deal with, and it is up to him to grant those events as significant based on the assertions he makes.

When looking at how Coetzee challenges the conventions of truth, pairing it with disabilities studies seems so appropriate since they try to accomplish the same goal: to question the process of determining what is acceptable or not when it is practiced by the masses and challenging those notions with figures or representations of characters who are from the place where those deemed inappropriate among those who abide by the boundaries are made present and have their opinions heard. Friday becomes essential when looking at his role as the silent marginalized voice as well as a character of difference. However, Paul and Michael K insert their opinions about what it is to make meaning of their lives while not participating among those who see them as inferior. It is these types of interpretations that make Coetzee’s work not only worth reading, but beg to be analyzed and applied to the individual, proposing the questions that are rarely asked. In relation to these characters as disabilities studies, they are as important to study as representations of disabled bodies as they to challenge the normative type. When looking back at Thomas and her claim of where meaning resides from a post-modern perspective, that the truth is in the margins, and at Coetzee’s disabled bodies, it makes the margins the best place to situate meaning.

Works Cited

Coetzee, J.M. Dusklands. New York: Penguin Publishing, 1974.

—. Foe. New York: Penguin Publishing, 1986.

—. Life and Times of Michael K. New York: Penguin Publishing, 1983.

—. Slow Man. New York: Penguin Publishing, 2005.

Davis, Lennard J. “Who Put the ‘The’ in ‘the Novel’? Identity Politics and Disability in Novel Studies”. Duke University Press 31.3 (1998): n.       pag. Web. 9 Dec 2011

Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Watson, Stephan. “Colonialism and the Novels of J.M. Coetzee”. Indiana University Press 17.3   (1986): n. pag. Web. 10 Dec 2011.