Acts of Visitation.

Beschreibung

This study traces, in J.M. Coetzee’s fictional and non-fictional production, an imaginative and intellectual master-plot deriving from Coetzee’s perception of European presence in (South) Africa as having its origin in an act of illegi¬timate penetration and fraudulent visi¬tation. In Coetzee’s novels, the histori¬cal and political problem of a hostile occupation and unfair distribution of the land finds a correspondence in the domestic space of house and farm, and the uneasy cohabitation of its occu¬pants, along with the relation between hosts and guests. The seminal dimen¬sion of the categories of penetration and visitation is highlighted, as these are shown to operate not only on a spatial level but also on an epistemo¬logical, physical, psychological, herme¬neutic, metafictional and ethical one: we encounter literary and psychological secrets that resist decipherment, bodies that cannot be penetrated, writers de¬picted as intruders, parents that ask to be welcomed by their children. This study also identifies, in Coet¬zee’s narrative, an ethical proposal grounded on a logic of excess and un-conditionality – a logic of ‘not enough’ – lying behind certain acts of hospi¬tality, friendship, kindness, care, and guidance to the gate of death, acts that may transform prevailing unequal socio-historical conditions and hostile personal relationships, characterized by a logic of parasitism and intrusion. As the figure of the writer progressively gains explicit prominence in Coetzee’s literary production, special attention will be paid to it, as it alternately ap¬pears as secretary and master, migrant and intruder, pervert and foe, citizen and neighbour. Overall, Acts of Visita¬tion analyzes how Coetzee’s works de¬pict the (South) African land, the Karoo farm, the familial household or the writer’s and literary character’s house as simultaneously contending and re¬demptive sites in which urgent histori¬cal, ethical, and metafictional issues are spatially explored and dramatized. María J. López is a Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Córdoba, Spain. She has written on Virginia Woolf, Patrick White, Salman Rush¬die, Anita Desai, and Zoë Wicomb. Her current research interests focus on ex¬ploration narratives, forms of community in contemporary South African litera¬ture, and the (anti)pastoral tradition in the South African novel in English.
This study traces, in J.M. Coetzee’s fictional and non-fictional production, an imaginative and intellectual master-plot deriving from Coetzee’s perception of European presence in (South) Africa as having its origin in an act of illegi¬timate penetration and fraudulent visi¬tation. In Coetzee’s novels, the histori¬cal and political problem of a hostile occupation and unfair distribution of the land finds a correspondence in the domestic space of house and farm, and the uneasy cohabitation of its occu¬pants, along with the relation between hosts and guests. The seminal dimen¬sion of the categories of penetration and visitation is highlighted, as these are shown to operate not only on a spatial level but also on an epistemo¬logical, physical, psychological, herme¬neutic, metafictional and ethical one: we encounter literary and psychological secrets that resist decipherment, bodies that cannot be penetrated, writers de¬picted as intruders, parents that ask to be welcomed by their children. This study also identifies, in Coet¬zee’s narrative, an ethical proposal grounded on a logic of excess and un-conditionality – a logic of ‘not enough’ – lying behind certain acts of hospi¬tality, friendship, kindness, care, and guidance to the gate of death, acts that may transform prevailing unequal socio-historical conditions and hostile personal relationships, characterized by a logic of parasitism and intrusion. As the figure of the writer progressively gains explicit prominence in Coetzee’s literary production, special attention will be paid to it, as it alternately ap¬pears as secretary and master, migrant and intruder, pervert and foe, citizen and neighbour. Overall, Acts of Visita¬tion analyzes how Coetzee’s works de¬pict the (South) African land, the Karoo farm, the familial household or the writer’s and literary character’s house as simultaneously contending and re¬demptive sites in which urgent histori¬cal, ethical, and metafictional issues are spatially explored and dramatized. María J. López is a Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Córdoba, Spain. She has written on Virginia Woolf, Patrick White, Salman Rush¬die, Anita Desai, and Zoë Wicomb. Her current research interests focus on ex¬ploration narratives, forms of community in contemporary South African litera¬ture, and the (anti)pastoral tradition in the South African novel in English.

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María J. López

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