Colonialism in Coetzee (Part 2)

There was some illumination about the presence of colonialism in Disgrace after finishing the book. I don’t think that’s what Coetzee set out to do but from what little we know about the man’s life it’s reasonable to assume that he never really intends to do any real thing in his work. But there is still so much about how someone feels about the shift in structure in post-apartheid South Africa that it warrants critical commentary.

About Petrus, who is of course the most prominent black character in the work, I think his characterization was deliberately planned to make us not like him on a certain level. He strikes me as man a hair trigger away from becoming a malicious force. He wants to drive out the whites. Now why does he want to do this?

On a very clear level there is the aspect of reclamation involved. Petrus might see himself as taking back the land of his people, his ancestors, his birthright that was taken from him and his father and his father before him by the whites. I point to the Cheikh Hamidou’s quote in The Novel in Africa:

“They are truly African because they are born in Africa, they live in Africa, their [sensibility] is African...”

Hamidou is talking about Africa writers but it fits into the way many people construct national and cultural identity. But the conflict is that even though almost all the white characters in to book were all born and raised in Africa, none of them actually are “African”. And no matter how different or kind Lucy or the Shaws or any other white might act to him; their presence there still means that the land does not belong to the people who it was intended for. This is his rebellion, he may no longer be fighting an army but he most certainly is launching his guerilla campaign against the last vestiges of an invading force. I don’t think van Wyck was right to call Disgrace racist based on this, Petrus and the Three are villains and villains rarely if ever have their motives fully explained. Coetzee manages however to present us a crime and while not explicitly stating a motive, we all can see exactly why someone who do or allow this type of things to happen.

There is something to be said about the way David Lurie treats him both before and after he realizes Petrus might have had something to do with the attack on Lucy’s farm and the key evidence of this at least to me is on p. 140 where he says to Bev:

“Because Petrus has a beard and smokes a pipe and carries a stick, you think Petrus is an old-style kaffir. But it is not like that at all. Petrus is not an old-style kaffir, much less a good old chap.”

Lurie’s not just accusing Bev of naivety, he seems to be projecting his own ideas and impressions of Petrus on to her; impressions that were proven wrong after the attack. He was willing to see Petrus as a kind hard worker and sees him now as a man who may be smarter and more cunning than any other person he’s encountered thus far. It is once again, just as we saw in his phone call to Soroya and having to deal with the fall out of his affair with Melanie, the colonialist being forced to recognize the change in the power structure and the humanity of the formerly colonized.

As to my feelings about Lurie, I don’t know. He’s certainly not someone I’d like to become anytime soon but unlike Sarah I don’t hate the man. May be I’m so screwed up in my own head that I can’t see why there’s so much venom towards him or maybe I still just see him a character in a book. I’m indifferent, yeah he manages to act like big jerk all the time but he’s still ink and paper to me.