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Deconstructing the Binary Relationships in Coetzee’s Disgrace
By Marjan Heidari, Mina Abbasiyannejad and Saman Hemati.
Published by The International Journal of the Humanities
| Format | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Article: Print | $US10.00 | |
| Article: Electronic | $US5.00 |
In his novel, Disgrace, J.M.Coetzee conveys a desolately realistic picture of post-apartheid South Africa. David Lurie, the male protagonist in the novel, is a cultured, sophisticated but disgraced academic after having an affair with a female student. In all this, he decides to experience rural life in the Eastern Cape, staying with his daughter, Lucy, on her farm. The novel essentially recounts how he struggles to reconcile himself to the world in which he finds himself. The instability of South Africa is reflected by the changes in Lurie’s life. In this novel, Coetzee looks at the complex binary relationships of numerous areas in post-apartheid South African life, including the pairings of white-black, parent-child, city-country and employer-employee relationships, since these undergo massive changes. This paper looks at how in an unjust way of social stratification these relationships have a profound effect on people’s lives. Additionally, it seeks to emphasize how Coetzee crafts a deconstruction of these binaries by distorting common perceptions of them.
| Keywords: | Coetzee, Post-Apartheid, Binary Relationships |
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International Journal of the Humanities, Volume 9, Issue 1, pp.69-74. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 726.999KB).
Marjan Heidari
PhD Student in English Literature, University Putra Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Serdang, Malaysia
Mina Abbasiyannejad
PhD Student, University Putra Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Saman Hemati
Student, Student, Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology, Kuala Lumpor, Malaysia