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Disgrace
By J.M.Coetzee

Abstract
In this paper I’m going to describe postcolonial theory, especially the themes of otherness,
discourse, hegemony, hybridity and difference in order to analyse the novel Disgrace
written by J.M.Coetzee. This South African writer shows Africanness in his novel, which is
set in post-apartheid South Africa and the voice of the colonizer switches with the voice of
the colonized. I will take into account the theories by Spivak, who explored the question
of whether the subjects of colonization could recover their voice, particularly women, who
are considered subalterns and “cannot speak”. I will also consider what Homi Bhabha calls
mimicry and the question of Otherness raised by Said.

Introduction
Before starting with the analysis it is necessary to understand postcolonialism and
postcolonial theories. Postcolonialism is related to the historical experiences of
decolonisation that took place especially in the twentieth century and refers to the
countries that achieved formal political independence from Britain and from other
Western European countries. The most important period of decolonization took place
after the Second World War due to a feeling of anti-colonial nationalism and because of
the decline of Britain’s power in favour of the United States of America, a former British
colony, and Russia.
Colonialism started at first as a commercial endeavour of the Western nations which
appropriated foreign land because of their desire to establish and control markets abroad.
They also sought for natural resources and labourers at a low cost, therefore beginning
with the exploitation of others. There were several participants in this process: the
colonisers or foreigners, or settlers, who came from one of these Western countries; the
colonised or natives, who were born in the place where the colonisers arrived; slaves, who
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were often neither coloniser nor colonised but could have been brought from another
place. Nevertheless, over time there were second and third generations of settlers, who
were born there, which made them “natives”, and also settlers who mingled with the
initial natives. Consequently, no people is completely “native” or “foreign” to a place.
The postcolonial theory emerges out of literary studies and emphasises the tension
between the metropolis and the former colonies. It questions the system of values that
has supported imperialism and focuses on cultural displacements after colonial conquest
seen from a non-Eurocentric perspective. This theory can be traced to the 1950s as in this
decade, after India’s independence in 1947, many important documents were published,
for example, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, over their differing views about Algeria;
Fidel Castro’s “History Shall Absolve Me” speech; Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks
(1952) and Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart (1958). During the following decades
additional texts that articulated the social, political, and economic conditions of various
subaltern groups were published. Albert Memmi wrote The Colonizer and the Colonized
(1965, English version) that would soon become the foundation of postcolonial theory and
writings. In particular, postcolonialism gained the attention of the West with the
publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and
Helen Tiffin’s The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures
(1989). By the early and mid-1990s, the terms postcolonial and postcolonialism had
become firmly established in academic and popular discourse.
Postcolonial criticism involves the analysis of literary texts produced in the countries or
cultures that have been under the control of Western powers at any time in their
histories. It can also refer to texts about these colonised places by writers who come from
the colonising culture. This type of criticism tries to decentre/recentre and/or deconstruct
“the Self” (as “central”, “original”, “good”, “cultivated”, “true”) and “the Other” (as
“peripheral/marginal”, “copy”, “bad”, “savage”, “false”).
There are three big names in connection with Postcolonial Criticism. One of them is
Edward Said, an American writer and professor of Palestinian origin who was born on
November 1, 1935 and died on September 25, 2003, who in his Orientalism (1978)
focused on the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised, especially how the
Western texts have (mis)represented the East, how the coloniser “invented” false images
of the “Third” (postcolonial) World. In this sense Orientalism justified Imperialism and
convinced the “natives” that Western culture represented universal civilization. The
second important name is Homi Bhabha, born in the Parsi community of Bombay in 1949,
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who in his essay “Postcolonial Criticism” (1992) explored how some cultures
(mis)represent other cultures so that the former extend their political and social
domination in the modern world order. In Nation and Narration (1990) and The Location
of Culture (1994) he focuses on what actually happens in the cultural interaction between
the coloniser and the colonised. The colonised repeats the coloniser’s discourse and
habits, mimicry.
Mimicry is, thus, the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation, and discipline,
which “appropriates” the Other as it visualizes power. (Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial
Discourse- Homi Bhabha, 1984)

Gayatri Spivak, a renowned critical theorist born in Calcutta, India, in 1942, is the third
highly influential critic. In her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, she delves into the
condition of the postcolonial subject as a “silenced” being without his own voice or
discourse as he is in the middle of two opposing cultures. She explores the possibility for
these colonised subjects, particularly women, to recover their voices.
It is necessary to mention some terms in connection with postcolonial criticism, which are
otherness, hegemony, discourse (voice/silence), hybridity (diaspora/border) and difference
(silence/opacity).
Otherness is a concept used by Said in his Orientalism (1978) and it refers to the discourse
the Western coloniser used about the colonised peoples. This can be interpreted as the
idea that the construction of the “Self” in the Western discourse was based on placing the
colonised “Oriental” peoples and places as the “Other”, meaning alien or non-Western,
ergo inferior.
The construction of identity - for identity, whether of Orient or Occident, France or Britain, while obviously
a repository of distinct collective experiences, is finally a construction – involves establishing opposites and
”others” whose actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and re-interpretation of their
differences from “us”. Each age and society re-creates its “Others”. Far from a static thing then, identity of
self or of “other” is a much worked-over historical, social, intellectual, and political process that takes place
as a contest involving individuals and institutions in all societies. (Orientalism, Said, Penguin Books p332)

Hegemony is a class alliance by means of which one, leading [hegemonic] class assumes a
position of leadership over other classes, in return guaranteeing them certain benefits, so
as to be able to secure public political power over society as a whole.* The term
“hegemony” was first developed as a concept by the Italian Gramsci (1891-1937). He was
a Marxist who wrote a lot of his works in prison. He defines “hegemony” as “the force by
which people are convinced of the naturalness or rightness of their position and that of
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their rulers...the political leadership of a hegemonic or dominating group is through the

consent and acceptance of the ruled...” He wanted to demonstrate that every nation
state required that some class is able to establish a hegemony capable of unifying the
nation and resolving its historical problems.* In a postcolonial view, hegemony can be
regarded as a model to understand how or/and why the colonised accepted the colonial
power and ideology. Some institutions such as schools are largely responsible for
establishing hegemonic power.
Discourse as a key concept to analyse postcolonial and colonial texts was also developed
by Said in his Orientalism (1978). He states that what creates a discourse is a set of rules
which determine who can speak and what statement will be considered either plausible or
implausible. In a colonial text the colonised peoples were represented in the way the
coloniser saw them. The power and authority from the coloniser over the colonised was
shown in these texts. For this reason, when analysing colonial discourse we study how
colonised people were constructed and even “silenced” in colonial writing. They were
silenced because their voices were either absent or presented in such a way to make them
appear worthless or a confirmation of negative stereotypes.
One aspect of the electronic, postmodern world is that there has been a reinforcement of the stereotypes
by which the Orient is viewed. Television, the films, and all the media’s resources have forced information
into more and more standardized molds. So far as the Orient is concerned, standardization and cultural
stereotyping have intensified the hold of the nineteenth-century academic and imaginative demonology of
“the mysterious Orient.” (Orientalism, Said, Penguin Books p26)

Hybridity appeared as a response to the static and essentialist notions of identity of race
and nation promoted by colonial discourses as Nationalism and Negritude and it is
characterised by the fragmentation of strict definitions and binary oppositions such as
coloniser/colonised, Western/Eastern. These oppositions undergo a process of
deconstruction due to the appearance of a hybrid space, also called “Third Space”
between them. Hybridity is often used colloquially in terms of its use in horticulture as the
combination of two kinds that produce a third, which stresses the idea that each kind
possesses a self-identity. In postcolonial studies the intention is to deconstruct these self-
identities of cultures that perceive themselves to be whole but are in fact constituted by a
lack that requires supplementation by the “Other”.** The term “hybridity” has been
extensively theorized by Homi Bhabha and has been transported to other fields of analysis
*MIA: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of Terms

**The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms edited by Peter Childs,Roger Fowler

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in post-colonial contexts such as multiculturalism and diaspora. He asserts that the desire
of colonial mimicry, from the European point of view, is to produce a colonial subject
representative of a mythical European identity, to create symbols of Englishness and
Frenchness. The effect is to produce hybridity, to forge colonial subjects who are “almost
the same, but not quite,” “almost the same but not white”. Chinua Acheve states in this
respect that the acquisition of European schooling by the colonized subject allowed the
colonizer to create the “man of two worlds” theory, to prove that the native could never
truly absorb the European influences, no matter how much exposure to them he has. A
native would always discard the mask and show his real face at a crucial moment. An
educated native was different from and worse than the colonizer, as he had lost his links
with his own people and perhaps could not even understand them anymore.
Diaspora is the voluntary or enforced migration of peoples from their native homelands. It
is related to hybridity as diaspora literature is often concerned with questions of
maintaining or altering identity, language, and culture while in another culture or
country*.
Difference is the cultural distinctiveness the colonised people show in several ways, such
as using non-English vocabulary, depicting specific cultural practices or mentioning
indigenous literature or oral traditions. The effect “difference” may have is the “distance”
between the text and the reader who is not familiar with what is depicted and the
vocabulary used.
The representation of difference must not be hastily read as the reflection of pre-given ethnic or cultural
traits set in the fixed tablet of tradition. The social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective,
is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of
historical transformation. (From The Location of Culture, Bhabha © 1994, Routledge.)

One of the main features of imperialism is control over language. The imperial education
system institutes a standard version of the metropolitan language as the norm, and
considers all the other “variants” impure and marginal.

*Key-terms in post-colonial literature

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Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee
Disgrace is a novel which takes place in South Africa some years after the end of the
apartheid.
South Africa's President Frederik Willem de Klerk addresses parliament on February 2, 1990, calling for
reforms that would end the division of the country. Nelson Mandela was then released from prison.

With international pressure on South Africa's apartheid regime increasing since the 1970s, President
Frederik Willem de Klerk finally introduces reforms at the beginning of February 1990 that would lead to the
end of white minority rule in the deeply divided country. Just nine days later he releases Nelson Mandela
from prison after 27 years and abolishes the racist apartheid laws. The first multi-racial elections are held in
April 1994. It is the first time blacks are permitted to vote, and Nelson Mandela is elected president of South
Africa. (Klaus Dahmann / bk- 2013

David Lurie is the main character and narrator of the story. He is a fifty-two, divorced
university professor who teaches “Communication Skills” and “Advanced Communication
Skills” with little enthusiasm at the Cape Technical University, formerly Cape Town
University College. He was really a professor of modern languages but he was not
teaching that subject since Classics and Modern Language courses had been closed due to
a plan of rationalization on educational resources. He describes himself as a man with
good looks and a “womanizer” who dreams of writing an opera based on Byron, who was
notorious for his scandalous life. In the first chapter he is with Soraya, a black young
prostitute, with whom he has a kind of relationship. They meet regularly and he describes
his feelings for her as affectionate, so much so that he fantasises with the idea of seeing
her in another place and for more time apart from the ninety-minute session she offers.
However, he soon realises Soraya is a married woman with two children. This discovery
affects their mutual confidence forcing her to put an end to their encounters.
David Lurie represents the coloniser and Soraya, the colonised. She is described as having
a honey-brown body and as being quiet and docile. Their relationship is very good because
she just listens to him but does not have a voice.
During their sessions he speaks to her...She has heard the stories of his two marriages,.. Of her life
outside Windsor Mansions Soraya reveals nothing.

He then sets eyes on one of his students, Melanie Isaacs, a very young girl who apparently
consents to have sex with him despite his age and status.
Melanie also represents the colonised. She cannot resist the power of the coloniser even
though she is studying at university, she is an intellectual. Nevertheless, David affirms he
can only find beauty in her, not wit.
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After some time she gives up her studies and her father first asks Lurie to talk to her about
the matter but then he accuses the professor of being the cause of her desertion and his
shame. Mr Isaacs introduces a complaint of harassment against Lurie. A committee is
gathered at the university where he admits to all the charges against him owing to
“ungovernable impulse”. His predicament becomes public and the university has to set an
example. They want him to make a statement regretting his behaviour but instead he
concedes to the press that he has had an “enriching” experience with the student.
David is arrogant and he feels superior, like the coloniser. He never thought the girl
wanted to resist him. She remained silent.
Refusing to make the repentance statement or accepting counselling, he is asked to resign
and leaves for Salem to visit his daughter, Lucy, who is described by her father as a rather
plump girl who lives on a farmhouse and has a sapphic relationship with Helen, who is not
there at the moment. She has some land where she grows flowers and vegetables which
she sells in the market. She also owns boarding kennels and is helped by her assistant,
Petrus, who will soon be her co-proprietor. When David meets him he realizes he is a tall
black man in his forties who has two wives and some children. David feels quite
disappointed about his daughter’s lifestyle, he hopes she will reconsider the idea of
spending her life in that poor area.
Lucy is also representing the coloniser but more than that she can be seen as a
metonymical figure representing the country that is no longer under the imperialistic
control David symbolises and the country that is slowly being penetrated by the colonised.
Lucy is trying to speak her own voice but she still finds it difficult to speak to David. She,
like the country, is a hybrid, in the middle of two spaces, she lives the life of the colonised,
working the land and selling the produce at the market, but she does not want to leave
that place, she refuses to be under the imperialistic control even if she is a colonizer, too,
even if staying there brings danger to her. Petrus stands for the colonised people, who
shows both hybridity and difference. He speaks “english”, with a small “e” as opposed to
the Standard English, he watches football on TV, which may be seen as examples of
mimicry. However, the TV offers programmes in a language neither Lucy nor David can
understand.
The commentary alternates between Sotho and Xhosa, languages of which he understands not a word.

Besides, Petrus does not hide his different customs: having more than one wife, for
example. It is clearly seen how Petrus invades Lucy’s property little by little. For example,
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when David is sleeping on the sofa and Lucy is in her bedroom, Petrus comes in and
watches TV changing channels as he pleases. He is feeling at home.
The figure of a dog is a powerful metaphor. It is also metonymical as it is, in my view,
representing the colonised people. David says about these animals:
We are of a different order of creation from the animals. Not higher, necessarily, just different. So if we
are going to be kind, let it be out of simple generosity, not because we feel guilty or fear retribution.

“Fear retribution” is foreshadowing what will happen later. And Lucy also speaks about
dogs:
They do us the honour of treating us like gods, and we respond by treating them like things.

He is introduced to Bev Shaw, an unattractive woman who runs a clinic for animals and
whose main job is to “put animals down”. She is always in need of volunteers. Lucy
suggests he should help Bev so he did not get bored. She also convinces him to help
Petrus with the dogs as well, as she mentions that Petrus might pay him if he does. He
agrees.
Bev is also representing the coloniser and she is seen as the merciful killer of the dogs, as
there are too many. She is despised by David because she is not beautiful, like Melanie, or
young. Bev, however, has a voice and a stand. She knows why she does what she does,
she feels pity for the animals and that is why she is the right person to sacrifice them. Bev
could be metonymical for the Empire. She is old, ugly, with an ugly voice (for David) he
does not want to listen to the Motherland telling him life in the “colony” has changed.
David thinks the animals know they are going to be killed, he says in Africa “they are born
prepared.”
Coetzee says that things are beginning to fall into place, which echoes Achieve’s Things
Fall Apart and it is really an irony as really things are not falling into place. David’s
colonised style is beginning to end.
One day, two men and a boy march towards the house and ask to use the phone. Lucy and
her father understand immediately this is not good. The men hit David and lock him in the
bathroom while Lucy keeps shouting for Petrus. They kill some dogs unmercifully,
unnecessarily and suddenly open the bathroom to splash David with some combustible
material and set him on fire. Fortunately, he can put out the fire with the toilet water,
goes out of the bathroom and sees Lucy. She has been raped. The men have escaped in
his car.
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The two black young men stand for the new decolonised who are re-conquering the land,
who are penetrating the country, Lucy. They show the new country after its
independence, without many rules. David cannot prevent this to happen, he cannot help
Lucy. These men are too violent. Why do they kill the dogs in such a way? The animals
were locked in cages! Probably to show they are not like the white man, they are different
and they are not merciful. We still see them through David’s eyes as the “Other”,
therefore, bad.
Lucy and her father are helped by Bev and Bill Shaw. After this incident, Lucy, who finds it
very hard to overcome the attack, wants to continue with her life in the same way despite
her father’s objection. She does not even report what happened to her to the police. She
describes everything, what they look like, what they took, except the rape. She wants to
keep it private.
“The reason is that, as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In another
time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, at this time, it is not. It is my
business, mine alone.”

“This place being what?”

“This place being South Africa.”

Lucy is becoming silent. She accepts the dangerous consequences of living there alone,
she knows there is nothing she can do about it. Moreover, this incident draws father and
daughter further apart. He sees her attack as his disgrace as if he was punished for his
previous conduct, failing to realise Lucy is the victim.
Petrus, who has been suspiciously absent, appears only to ask Lucy if she is going to the
market the following day, but she is not in the mood to do so.
David feels Lucy is ashamed, he blames the criminals for making Lucy lose her confidence.
He believes these men will tell everybody how they showed a woman her place. Discourse
is really important to mark the “otherness”, to show the different point of views.
David goes to the market with Petrus. He supposes Petrus has something to do with the
aggression as he intends to take over Lucy’s land. However, David has mixed feelings
about Petrus. On the one hand, he describes him as “a man of patience, energy,
resilience.” He is “even prepared to like him.” On the other hand, he believes he is “a
plotter and a schemer and no doubt a liar too, like peasants everywhere.” When speaking
to Petrus about the attack, David does not get him to tell him what he wants to hear. Now
David is becoming silent as he does not tell Petrus everything he thinks, he is losing power.
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This is not what he came for – to be stuck in the back of beyond, warding off demons, attending to a dying
enterprise. If he came for anything, it was to gather himself, gather his forces. Here he is losing himself
day by day.

David spends his days working with Petrus and going to the market. He is getting used to
looking ugly because of his scars, too. Lucy, on the other hand, is not recovering. On a
certain occasion, when Petrus throws a party, he invites both David and Lucy. Surprisingly,
David feels sensitive about Petrus’s slaughtering sheep for the party. He who thought
animals were used to dying in Africa! Once at the party, they were the only “whites” and
“curious glances are cast at the two of them, or perhaps only at his skullcap.” He feels out
of place. Petrus’s wife displays her pregnant abdomen. She looks younger than Lucy and
does not meet David’s eyes. This is probably how women there are supposed to behave –
the other of the other. Petrus says about women:
“Always it is best if the first one is a boy,” ”Then he can show his sisters – show them how to behave. Yes.
A girl is very expensive.” “Always money, money, money.” “Now, today, the man does not pay for the
woman. I pay.”

Suddenly, Lucy recognises the boy who has attacked her. He is there, at Petrus’s
celebration. She would not tell the police this time, either.
“David, no, don’t do it. It’s not Petrus’s fault. If you call in the police, the evening will be destroyed for him.
Be sensible.”

Petrus has nothing to say about the boy and David is beginning to dislike him immensely.
As Petrus drones on about his plans, he grows more and more frosty toward him. He would not wish to be
marooned with Petrus on a desert isle. He would certainly not wish to be married to him. A dominating
personality. The young wife seems happy, but he wonders what stories the old wife has to tell.

We can read the colonial “white-men–protecting-brown-women-from-brown men” idea.

Besides, David cannot grasp the message in Petrus’s discourse. It is quite impenetrable.
Is it a question? A declaration? What game is Petrus playing?

David has a fling with Bev before leaving that place. She has been very understanding, like
a friend. He is definitely changing, Bev is neither young nor pretty. He convinces himself “a
Bev” is what he can aspire to, he is not the same man, so superior. He keeps losing
control. David says about that affair:
Well, let poor Bev Shaw go home and do some singing too. And let him stop calling her poor Bev Shaw. If
she is poor, he is bankrupt.

David wants Lucy to leave her land, to go to Holland where she has family, but she does
not want to do so. She believes her attack is the price she has to pay to be there. She says
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“I am a dead person and I do not know yet what will bring me back to life.” She thinks that
leaving the farm would mean defeat and does not intend to feel defeated for ever. David
is sure Lucy wants to “make up for the wrongs of the past”. What wrongs? Is he talking
about Lucy or about imperialism?
No sooner has Bev assured him Lucy will be fine than David goes back to Cape Town, even
though he thinks that place is so far away “almost another country”.
But before arriving home, he visits Mr Isaacs, Melanie’s father, at the school where he
works in Georgia to tell him his side of the story. After the assault he and Lucy lived, he
can probably sympathise with Mr Isaacs. He does not believe, however, he has raped
Melanie. He reveals that everything started as an adventure but then she started a kind
of fire inside him. He gave this kind of explanation of the abuse he committed.
Mr Isaacs just explains that Melanie is doing well and has resumed her studies. He is
interested in his plans after leaving his profession. After David tells him about his own
daughter and the book he wants to write, he is invited for dinner at the Isaacs’. At their
house he notices the kind of family they are, different from Petrus’s family.
The car washed, the lawn mowed, savings in the bank. All their resources concentrated on launching the
two jewel daughters into the future: clever Melanie, with her theatrical ambitions; Desiree, the beauty.

Melanie’s family are the postcolonial recognizable “Other” mimicking the colonizer “Self”.
Bhabha says that mimicry is the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of
reform, regulation and discipline, which 'appropriates' the Other as it visualizes power.
Mimicry is also the sign of the inappropriate, however, a difference which consolidates the
dominant strategic function of colonial power, intensifies surveillance, and poses an
intrinsic threat to both 'normalized' knowledges and disciplinary powers. “Mimicry
repeats rather than represents”. ("Of mimicry and man: The ambivalence of colonial discourse,"
in The Location of Culture, pp.85-92.)

In this sense Petrus’s family is more representative than Melanie’s. Petrus is a menace to
the white man, he is appropriating the white man’s land. Melanie is not. She is the silent
“Other” until her father speaks for her. Then the white man loses his status – David loses
his job. Gayatri Spivak writes in her “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, “Between patriarchy and
imperialism, subject-constitution and object-formation, the figure of the woman
disappears, not into a pristine nothingness, but into a violent shuttling which is the
displaced figuration of the “third-world” woman caught between tradition and
modernization.”
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When David finally apologises to them, which is what they have been expecting, he is
acting like the superior “self” by saying “he lacked the lyrical”, meaning he was not able to
show his feelings. But Mr Isaacs is not easily persuaded to forgive him and questions the
real purpose of his visit.
“You are not hoping for us to intervene on your behalf, are you, with the university?”(p173-29)

David believes he is being punished for his bad behaviour and does not want to get his job
back. He is resigned to his fate:
“I am living it out from day to day, trying to accept disgrace as my state of being.” (p172- 22)

Once in Cape Town, in his flat, he ascertains he has a lot of debts. Besides, somebody has
burgled the place. Anyway, he tries to go on with his work at home, writing about Byron,
and he goes back to the university only to collect his books. As soon as he unlocks the
door in his previous office, it dawns on him that he has been displaced. He finds posters of
Superman and Louis Lane on the wall and he meets the young Dr Otto, who is in his place.
The symbol of Superman as the “Champion of the Oppressed” is striking. Superman, which
was the symbol of hope for and by the Americans, the post powerful ex-colony.
Furthermore, the name “Otto” representing the colonial “Self” as it has German origin but
now displacing another colonizer “Lurie”. Dr Otto exemplifies the new settler who has
probably interbred with the initial natives, thus being a native, too, and, therefore, a
hybrid occupying the “third space”.
David’s ex-wife is concerned about his future as he seems incapable of moving on. He
even tries to see Melanie again and when that does not work because one of her friends
warns him against it, he goes back to his old habits and meets a young streetwalker who is
even younger than Melanie. He exorcises reality through sex. And he feels better, he sees
himself more clearly as “Not a bad man but not good either. Not cold but not hot,..”
(p195-1)
David suspects there is something strange about Lucy. He therefore pays her a short visit
and finds out that she is pregnant with one of the rapists’ child. Abortion is not an option
for Lucy as she hints at having lived a similar situation before and does not want to suffer
that again. She also confides that the boy she has recognized at Petrus’ party is living at
Petrus’ farm.
Not only was Lucy violated but also impregnated. The country is producing the new
inhabitant in this post-colonial, post-apartheid life.
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David knew that the boy could be Lucy’s child’s father. He knew Petrus was helping a
criminal and he was not prepared to let that happen. For this reason, he heads for his
house and is surprised to learn that the boy was under Petrus’ protection as he was his
wife’s brother, and, being aware of the seriousness of the boy’s act Petrus offers to marry
Lucy. Shocked, David leaves for Lucy’s house.
The discourse of white man and black man, colonizer/ colonized is clear in David’s
conversation with Petrus.
“Your child? Now he is your child, this Pollux?”

“Yes. He is a child. He is family, my people.”

So that is it. No more lies. My people. As naked an answer as he could wish. Well, Lucy is his people. (p201-
26)

“...This is not how we do things.” We: he is on the point of saying, We Westerners. (p202- 18)

The borders are becoming clearer. There a wire now dividing Lucy’s house from Petrus’s.
The difference between colonized and colonizer are also becoming clearer.
Lucy did not find Petrus’ proposal as dreadful as David did. She is ready to accept the
proposal with some conditions. David cannot understand why Lucy refuses to go to
Holland as he suggested and he is so furious that when he sees the boy, Pollux, peeping at
her he attacks him. To make matters worse, Lucy is angry with him and he decides to
move out of Lucy’s farm and hires a room at a house near the hospital.
Lucy says she will sign the land over to him and that she will “become a tenant on his
land.” This shows a reversal of fortunes. Her land becomes his. Lucy believes it is the price
she has to pay for the sins of the past.
“How humiliating,” he says finally. “Such high hopes, and to end like this.”

“Yes, I agree, it is humiliating. But perhaps that is a good point to start from again. Perhaps that is what I
must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No
cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity.”

“Like a dog.”

“Yes, like a dog.”

The image of the dog is present again as a symbol of postcolonialism. The colonizer is
being reduced to nothing and things start to “fall apart”.
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David is planning to stay in that place until the baby is born. Meanwhile, he would help
Bev at the clinic. The clinic becomes like his home where he spends almost every day
eating, feeding the animals, cleaning, reading or composing his opera on Byron and
Teresa, which, in spite of some moments of inspiration, is not making any progress. On
some other days, he helps Lucy at the market and takes her for lunch. He is starting to
accept the idea of becoming a grandfather and also embracing country life.
Displacement is clearly seen. He is living in another place, what is more, he sojourns there,
in a place which is not even a house but a clinic where animals are killed. He cannot even
finish his job, his opera. He is losing his identity as the superior colonizer and seen as the
alien figure, out of place.
At the clinic Bev keeps killing dogs and cats mercifully while he keeps helping her by
comforting the dying animals. He is fond of one dog which he is saving week after week
until finally, he gives him up.
He lets imperialism go, he realises the white man superiority versus black man inferiority
is no longer the rule. He was holding to it, but in the end, he is defeated by the new
hegemony.

Conclusion

As a post-apartheid, post-independence novel, Disgrace is written to show the developing

new culture, the Africanness. It does so by the metonymical use of the text, Lucy is the
country being penetrated by the black subject, displacing the supremacy of the white
man. Africanness is conveyed through language, as there are examples of changes in
syntax and transliteration (“Molo. I’m looking for Petrus.”) and also symbolic implication
of setting portraying how the flora and fauna are in fusion with man. (Sudden darkness,
from the waters of Lethe. ”There have been goats here since the beginning of time.”)
The writer deconstructs the binary opposition “white man, good”- “black man, bad” and
creates the third space where most of the story takes place. He uses mimicry and also
difference to show how the colonized resist colonization.
The novel is postcolonial, too as it shows the metaphor of palimpsest. Culture as
palimpsest implies that there remain ineradicable traces of past cultures which form part
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of the constitution of the present (Ashcroft, et al. 174; Rabasa 145). The novel is full of
intertextuality and references to real people such as Byron and Teresa, Mozart and other
artists. I have not mentioned all the intertextual references as there are so many and I
believe another paper should be written to deal with all of them.

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https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/bhabha/biblio.html

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http://www.dw.de/end-of-apartheid-1990/a-16764408

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http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1432&context=kunapipi
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Teoría Literaria- Booklets I-II-III (Ms Florencia Perduca, 2011)

Orientalism, Edward Said, (Penguin Books 2003)

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“Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.