Disgrace

Coetzee's Disgrace details the tragedy of a man's life while dealing with post colonialism in South Africa, but the first six chapters seem less concerned with the latter while setting up for the former discussion. However, post colonial theorist Edward Said's thinking can be applied even to this first section. For example, a section from Said's 1993 work Culture and Imperialism begins, "Domination and inequities of power and wealth are perennial facts of human society." According to Said, inequality is a lasting facet of society, and the first section of Disgrace includes several prime examples.

The protagonist is a white male working as a professor, and these factors create a status for him which enables him to exploit women. More specifically, he is able to pay prostitutes for sex. He is a regular with an African American prostitute named Soraya. The narrator claims that , "an affection has grown up in him for her," but when she must leave the business because her mother is sick, he proceeds to stalk her, which is not behavior characteristic of someone who truly cares for another person in a deep and meaningful way. Said would probably argue that because Soraya is black, and I would agree that because she is a female and a prostitute, the protagonist thinks she owes him something. He feels it is her duty to serve him.

When Soraya cannot be reached, he contacts the agency who offers another girl saying, "Lots of exotics to choose from-Malaysian, Thai, Chinese, you name it." This is clearly demeaning. Calling a person of another race an "exotic" and lumping people together as "exotics" is clearly a form of "domination" arising from "inequities of power and wealth" as Said would say. Because whites in South Africa enjoyed privilege during apartheid, they continued to dominate its society once apartheid ended and continued to dominate people of other races because a certain societal organization was formed that is difficult to break out of.