|
Advanced search
Previous page
|
Title
Literature and the Production of Ambiguous Memory: Confession and Double Thoughts in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace |
Full text
http://dspace.library.uu.nl:8080/handle/1874/385113 |
Date
2006 |
Author(s)
Buikema, R.L. |
Abstract
One year after the massive, five-volume Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report appeared in 1998, we indisputably witness in Coetzee's Disgrace, by way of the account of professor David Lurie's downfall, the upheaval of a country in transition. The representation of this upheaval, however, drew considerable attention nationally and internationally and sparked a still ongoing debate on what Coetzee was trying to say about the life and times of post-apartheid South Africa. In this essay it is argued that an interpretation that allows itself to be guided too much by an allegorical meaning of Disgrace's mirror plot and that is too quick to accept the referentiality of a post-apartheid South Africa screaming for future images, ignores important if not essential plot lines and intertextual echoes. The powers of imagination, as masterfully deployed by J. M. Coetzee, make the role of literature in the production of cultural memory both monumentalising and ambiguous. |
Subject(s)
Specialized histories (international relations, law); Literary theory, analysis and criticism; Culturele activiteiten; Overig maatschappelijk onderzoek; Taverne; Preprint |
Language
en |
Relation
1382-5577 |
Type of publication
Article |
Format
text/plain |
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess |
Identifier
European Journal of English Studies 10(2), 187-197 (2006) |
Repository
Utrecht - University of Utrecht
|
Added to C-A: 2019-10-09;11:23:00 |
© Connecting-Africa 2004-2024 | Last update: Friday, March 8, 2024 |
Webmaster
|