Coming to court justice in j m coetzee and salman rushdie

Coetzee & Salman Rushdie studies specifically Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Life & Times of Michael K as well as Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.. As I began my dissertation wi

COMING TO COURT:

JUSTICE IN J.M COETZEE & SALMAN RUSHDIE

ANNE SEAH KIN HONG

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

2012

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this thesis is my original work and it has been written by

me in its entirety I have duly acknowledged all the sources of information

which have been used in the thesis

This thesis has also not been submitted for any degree in any university

In addition, I would like to express my appreciation to the Department

of English Language & Literature The department has consistently provided immeasurable resources to cultivate as well as to challenge my knowledge and

my understanding of literature ever since my undergraduate days

I would also like to thank Seeta Nair Thank you for picking up the slack when it is not your slack to pick up Thank you for helping me procure obscure journal articles, for offering to run around getting my dissertation printed and bound Thank you for covering my back — all the time Your friendship is my blessing

To my husband, Lai Lee, words cannot express how happy I am that I found you who know and love and dream literature like I do, and how lucky I

am that I found you who will give it all up so that I can have it instead Thank you for letting me live my dream To my beautiful daughters, Sophie and Charlotte, you inspire me to go on

Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents To my father who taught me to love learning and to my mother who always puts me before herself, I am forever grateful Their support and sacrifices made it possible for

me to write this dissertation They never stopped believing in me, no matter how long and how circuitous a journey I took I dedicate this dissertation to them

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

SUMMARY v

INTRODUCTION 1

Structural Beginnings, Structural Promises 3

Rule of Example 6

AN EXEMPLARY CHAPTER 11

1st Person Present Tense Narration 13

Subject of Énoncé 17

Subject of Énunciation 23

Subject in Crisis 30

Literary Subject 47

Question of Justice 53

CHAPTER 1 57

Critical Question 58

Rhetorical Question 59

The Hyphen 61

Saleem’s Reply 64

My Answer 66

CHAPTER 2 67

Tai: A Scatological Embodiment of Meta-History 68

Tai Bibi: A Scatological Embodiment of Micro-History 75

Padma: A Scatological Embodiment of the Promise of History 80

My Answer 89

CHAPTER 3 91

His Re-Writing of His Story 92

His Re-Writing of India’s History 101

His Re-Writing of His Story & India’s History Once More 108

My Re-Writing of His Story & Literary History 114

CHAPTER 3 + 1 120

A WRONG STORY 122

His Wrong Story: He is Dying 124

His Wrong Story: He is at a Loss for Words 136

His Wrong Story: He is a Gardener 146

Wrong History 154

In Between His Wrong Story & Wrong History 164

CONCLUSION 169

Law 170

Justice 174

BIBLIOGRAPHY 177

SUMMARY

My dissertation Coming to Court: Justice in J.M Coetzee & Salman

Rushdie studies specifically Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Life & Times of Michael K as well as Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children In each chapter

dedicated to each text, I examine how justice is possible in his story via his writing of history In so doing, I raise Coetzee, Rushdie and their respective texts as examples of justice

re-In addition, I repeat their exemplification of justice via the structure of

my dissertation By positioning Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians at the beginning and Life & Times of Michael K at the end framing Rushdie’s

Midnight’s Children in the middle, I demonstrate that justice is promised,

comes, and is promised once more In other words, I show that the possibility

of justice is in promise

Last but not least, I bring to the foreground my pursuit of the PhD I enact the chapters of my dissertation as the prosecution and the defense of a legal trial in the court of law By proving that my study of justice in Coetzee, Rushdie and their respective texts is just, I promise justice for my dissertation

THE VERDICT IS OUT

The title of my dissertation, Coming to Court: Justice in J.M Coetzee

& Salman Rushdie, presents its subject — justice Framing “Justice” with the

terms “Coming to Court” and “J.M Coetzee & Salman Rushdie,” I set the discursive parameters While it is evident enough that justice is to be

examined in the (con)texts of J.M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie, the condition

of coming to court proves itself to be necessarily both less conclusive and more elusive Even as coming to court justice is coming to “pay [address]” to justice, coming to court justice is also as much coming to “seek” justice as coming to the “establishment” and “institution” of the “proceedings” of “law” and “judicature.” On the one hand, “seek[ing]” and examining justice in the (con)texts of J.M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie; on the other hand,

“seek[ing]” and making sure justice prevails by presenting and re-presenting

in defense my case or my dissertation before the “assembly of

[examiners-]judges [officially and] legally appointed and acting as a tribunal

to hear and determine [the] cause” of my dissertation, I am coming to court justice in J.M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie.1

However, as the pronoun in “Coming to Court: Justice in J.M

Coetzee & Salman Rushdie” is in fact in absentia, the speaking subject “I” is

then an assumed speaking subject The statement, “I am coming to court

justice in J.M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie,” is as plausible as it is

inconclusive While the grammatical sequence of the lexical units makes a

case for the speaking subject “I” taking action with the verb(s) “coming to

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1 Oxford English Dictionary (OED) Online, s.v “Court,” accessed August 26,

2012, http://www.oed.com

court” for the object(ive) of “justice in J.M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie,” the

insertion of another lexical unit i.e the colon into the sentence punctures and ruptures the grammatical structure of subject-verb-object As an incisive and divisive mark separating the lexical units “coming to court” and “justice in J.M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie,” the colon retains the grammatical function

of the lexical unit that comes before it while it revises the grammatical

function of the lexical unit that comes after it Even as “coming to court” stays

its course to remain as the verb(s), “justice in J.M Coetzee and Salman

Rushdie” reels between the roles of the object(ive) and the subject The colon

respectively and simultaneously asserts: “I am coming to court justice in J.M

Coetzee and Salman Rushdie,” and re-asserts: “Justice in J.M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie is coming to court.”

In the former assertion, the grammatical structure of

subject-verb-object is obviously reinstated; in the latter re-assertion, the term

of the object(ive) is seemingly missing However, I promise that the

fundamental component of the object(ive) is not so much missing as it is

implicitly assumed The end-object(ive) is in absentia because it is already

explicitly stated in the beginning as the subject “Justice in J.M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie” is repeated and reiterated as the explicit subject and the implicit object(ive) Thus, justice in J.M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie is coming to court justice in J.M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie

As the object(ive) that is also the subject that is coming to court the

object(ive) ad infinitum, justice is sentenced to the condition of continually

coming Even when it arrives at its end-object(ive) of justice, it returns to the beginning as the subject of justice that is still to come and still coming

Therefore, as much as, or precisely because, the beginning subject and the end-object(ive) of my dissertation is justice, I am intrinsically and extrinsically bound by the law of justice to exceed both the beginning subject and the end-object(ive) of my dissertation

Structural Beginnings, Structural Promises

Firstly, even as I am coming to court justice in either Coetzee or Rushdie, I am also always coming to court justice in the other Likewise, even when I have come to court with justice, regardless of whether it is justice in either Coetzee or Rushdie, I am still always coming to court justice in each respective author as well as in the other author As I am coming to court justice first in Coetzee, then continually in Rushdie, and finally in Coetzee again, I exceed the subject of justice in Coetzee and Rushdie via the structure

of my dissertation

I begin with “An Exemplary Chapter” on Coetzee’s Waiting for the

Barbarians.2 By raising and repeating the Magistrate’s question of justice, I present and re-present the Magistrate, the question of justice, as well as my dissertation, as subjects in crisis I argue that just like the Magistrate, my dissertation re-writes his story in the hope of re-writing history While the

Magistrate re-writes his story and the history of the outpost settlement amidst

the conflict between the barbarians and the Empire, I re-write both the

Magistrate’s and Coetzee’s stories as well as the general history of literary criticism on their stories in my particular study of them However, even though the Magistrate successfully re-writes his story and history, his story comes neither to a historical nor climactic conclusion of justice, but rather, his story culminates in a promise of justice Likewise, my re-writing of the

Magistrate’s and Coetzee’s stories as well as literary history remains to be justified Thus, even though or precisely because my “Exemplary Chapter” is

“a road that may lead nowhere,”3 I must — even more so — “[press] on along”4 in the other chapters of my dissertation so as to come to court justice

in Coetzee and Rushdie, as promised

I begin once more — in excess of the subject of justice in Coetzee’s

Waiting for the Barbarians and in proper with Chapter 1 that is “The

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2 J.M Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (London: Martin Secker &

Warburg, 1980; reprint, London: Vintage, 2000)

3 Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, 170; also the other title of “An

Exemplary Chapter.”

4 Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, 170

Remarkable Promise of [Rushdie’s] Midnight’s Children.”5 In Chapter 1 that

is also “Act 1: Prosecution,” I again raise and repeat the critical question posed by Saleem’s intended addressee, Padma: “But what is so precious to need all this writing-shiting?” By questioning the necessity of writing, she forces his story in particular and literature in general to come to terms with their condition of crisis Therefore, even though her question is seemingly rhetorical, it is repeatedly answered I promise to show that his story’s answer

to her question is “shiting” and excess in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3

respectively Thus proving the necessity of his story in particular and literature

in general, I justify my dissertation.6

I begin once more — as promised and in promise of justice In

Chapter 2 that is “The Remarkable Promise of Midnight’s Children: An

Excremental Logic” or “Act 2 Scene I: Defense,” I argue that “shiting” is that which is “so precious to need all this writing.” I first present in detail its embodiment by Tai, Tai Bibi and Padma, then simultaneously re-present its excess in Tai and Tai Bibi’s re-writing of history as well as in Padma’s

promise of history The excremental logic that makes possible “shiting” as the re-writing of history and the promise of history also makes possible justice In other words, “shiting” and “all this [re-]writing [and promise of history]” are

“so precious” because they promise justice.7

Thus, I begin once more — as promised and in promise of justice In

Chapter 3 that is “The Remarkable Promise of Midnight’s Children: An

Excremental Logic of Excess” or “Act 2 Scene II: Defense,” I argue that excess is that which is “so precious to need all this writing.”8 I start by tracing Saleem’s re-writings of his story and continue by relating them to his re-writing of history On the one hand, each particular re-writing of his story exceeds an earlier instance of it On the other hand, the excess of his story accumulates towards a general re-writing of history As his re-writing of his story re-writes history to expose the Emergency as a sham and to denounce Indira as a despot, his re-writing of his story and history is then an act of

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5 Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1981;

reprint, London: Vintage, 1995)

6 Ibid., 24

7 Ibid

8 Ibid

justice Likewise, my dissertation on his story puts together a case that lays claim to surpassing and exceeding all preceding critical work The promise that my re-writing of literary history is just, is the same promise that his story’s re-writing of India’s history is just This promise of justice is the promise of all writing i.e literature, I promise

As each act of justice is always supplemented by another promise of

justice, Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children shows that justice is excess Exceeding

its own act of justice in “[declaration, assurance and expectation]” as well as

in “commitment” of justice to come, Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children then addresses the subject of justice only insofar as it promises to address the

subject of justice.9 Hence, even though, or rather, precisely because I have come to court justice thus far, I must continue to come to court justice

paradoxically by returning to my promise of justice As I began my

dissertation with the promise of justice in Coetzee’s Waiting for the

Barbarians, I return to him to begin my dissertation once more with the

promise of justice in his Life & Times of Michael K.10

I begin once more with “A Wrong Story.”11 By pointing out that

Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K begins with a promise symbolised by a

teaspoon and ends with another promise symbolised by another teaspoon, I

present and re-represent Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K as a paradigm

— the example of which my dissertation repeats, reiterates and replicates Like his teaspoon, Coetzee frames my dissertation with the promise of justice Like his story and history of Michael K, my dissertation on Coetzee and Rushdie is “wrong”12 and in crisis While his story of K is dying and

disengaged from history, my dissertation promises to address the subject of justice only insofar as it addresses the subject of justice in promise Yet, despite his dying story that is disengaged from history, his story promises survival and makes right history in both an act of justice and another promise

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9 OED Online, s.v “Promise,” accessed August 26, 2012,

http://www.oed.com

10 J.M Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K (Johannesburg: Ravan Press Ltd,

1974; reprint, London: Vintage, 2004)

11 Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K, 110; also the title of my penultimate

chapter

12 Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K, 110

of justice Similarly, despite my excessive deferral in addressing the subject of justice, I promise that I have addressed the subject of justice, albeit in promise

In fact, I defend my mode of address by making it evident that the only

justified mode of address on the subject of justice is in promise Thus

maintaining my stance that despite my “wrong”13 dissertation, “one can

live,”14 I present and re-present my dissertation as an act of justice as well as another promise of justice

Rule of Example

Secondly, even as I am coming to court justice in Coetzee and

Rushdie in particular, I am also coming to court justice in general As Waiting

for the Barbarians, Midnight’s Children and Life & Times of Michael K are

particular examples of justice in general, my coming to court justice in these particular examples of justice is then in turn and in fact an extended example

of my coming to court justice in general Thus, I exceed the subject of justice

in Coetzee and Rushdie via the rule of example

Whilst Coetzee and Rushdie are perhaps more obviously identified and certainly more traditionally acclaimed as postcolonial authors of postcolonial literature, 15 I argue that they are exemplary authors with exemplary works of

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13 Ibid

14 Ibid., 184; also the other title of “A Wrong Story.”

15 Here, I provide a non-exhaustive list of existing critical studies on Coetzee

and Rushdie as postcolonial authors as well as on Waiting for the Barbarians,

Midnight’s Children and Life & Times of Michael K as postcolonial literature

Michael Marais and Kenneth Parker uphold Coetzee as a postcolonial author Refer to Michael Marais, “The Hermeneutics of Empire: Coetzee’s

Post-colonial Metafiction,” in Critical Perspectives on J.M Coetzee, eds

Graham Huggan and Stephen Watson (London: Macmillan Press; New York:

St Martin’s Press, 1996), 66-81 See Kenneth Parker, “J.M Coetzee: The

Postmodern and the Post-colonial,” in Critical Perspectives on J.M Coetzee,

eds Graham Huggan and Stephen Watson (London: Macmillan Press; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996), 82-106 Rosemary Jane Jolly considers

Waiting for the Barbarians postcolonial literature Look at Rosemary Jolly

Jane, Colonization, Violence, and Narration in White South African Writing:

André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach and J.M Coetzee (Athens: Ohio University

Press; Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1996) Jane Poyner, Sue

Kossew and Sam Durrant consider both Waiting for the Barbarians and Life &

the postcolonial genre only insofar as the postcolonial genre lays claim to justice In other words, Coetzee and Rushdie exemplify the postcolonial pursuit of justice

The postcolonial subject of justice, or more precisely, the postcolonial objection to injustice and its consequent object(ive) of seeking justice, is most succinctly summarized and yet most eloquently expressed in the title of Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin’s seminal reader and guide to

postcolonialism and postcolonial literature: The Empire Writes Back.16 The term “Empire” addresses the problematics of colonisation by simultaneously revealing a prior act of colonisation by the colonisers and unveiling the

colonised “[Writing back]” is then an act of redress by the colonised targeted

at the coloniser Thus pursuing justice, the postcolonial is a genre that is exceeded by its own literature The postcolonial subject of justice, its

object(ion) to injustice and its object(ive) of justice are exemplified by

writing They are as much demonstrated by writing to be examples of justice

as they are also re-presented by writing to be examples of writing’s own implicit but intrinsic subject and object(ive) of justice

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Times of Michael K postcolonial literature Refer to Jane Poyner, J.M Coetzee and the Paradox of Postcolonial Authorship (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009) See

Sue Kossew, Pen and Power: A Post-Colonial Reading of J.M Coetzee and

André Brink (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996) Look at Sam Durrant, Postcolonial Narrative and the Work of Mourning: J.M Coetzee, Wilson Harris, and Toni Morrison (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004) Likewise,

Graham Huggan and Jaina C Sanga hail Rushdie as a postcolonial author

Refer to Graham Huggan, “The Postcolonial Exotic,” Transition 64 (1994): 22-29 See Jaina C Sanga, Salman Rushdie’s Postcolonial Metaphors:

Migration, Translation, Hybridity, Blasphemy, and Globalization (Westport,

Connecticut; London: Greenwood Press, 2001) Neil Ten Kortenaar, Sanjeev Kumor Uprety and Harish Trivedi consider Midnight’s Children postcolonial

literature Refer to Neil Ten Kortenaar, “Postcolonial Ekphrasis: Salman

Rushdie Gives the Finger Back to the Empire,” Contemporary Literature 38,

no 2 (1997): 232-259 See Sanjeev Kumor Uprety, “Disability and

Postcoloniality in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Third-World Novels,” The Disability Studies Reader, ed Lennard J Davis (New York: Routledge, 1997), 366-381 Look at Harish Trivedi, “Postcolonial Hybridity:

Midnight’s Children” Literature & Nation: Britain and India 1800-1990, eds

Richard Allen and Harish Trivedi (New York: Routledge, 2000), 154-165

16 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back

(London: Routledge, 1989)

To only consider Coetzee and Rushdie within the genre of the

postcolonial is therefore inadequate and insufficient A postcolonial study of Coetzee and Rushdie ironically misses the point of postcolonialism and

postcolonial literature i.e justice It also wilfully neglects Waiting for the

Barbarians, Midnight’s Children and Life & Times of Michael K as writing

Hence, while Coetzee and Rushdie’s concern with the subject of justice, their

objection to injustice and their objective of justice in Waiting for the

Barbarians, Midnight’s Children and Life & Times of Michael K may

certainly be discussed within the frame of the postcolonial and the genre of postcolonial literature, I have decided to study them on their “own terms”17instead By reproducing their “own terms”18 via meticulous quotes and

extensive footnotes,19 I allow Waiting for the Barbarians, Midnight’s Children and Life & Times of Michael K to in turn also unfold as elaborate examples of

justice

Thus, I come to court the subject of justice via the rule of example However, as my object(ive) of justice has likewise come to be realized via the rule of example, I can be judged as having done justice to Coetzee and

Rushdie; Waiting for the Barbarians, Midnight’s Children and Life & Times of

Michael K; last but not least, justice itself, only when I submit my dissertation

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17 Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, 43

18 Ibid

19 Likewise, I re-produce the terms of the OED Online I quote its definitions

to an extent that is also questionable Arguably, the OED stands out amongst

all other dictionaries as the dictionary that is most often used, especially by scholars of the English language Therefore, while it is true that all

dictionaries provide definitions, the OED provides definitive definitions Indeed, the OED is an institution unto itself As a collection of true statements, the OED is the institution of positive constatives However, by weaving

instead of quoting in block the OED Online’s definitions within my argument,

I repeat and re-use the constative as the performative in my play for justice

Unlike the definitions in the OED, the definitions in my dissertation cannot be

determined as statements that are either true or false Instead, they perform the function of exemplifying my argument Other than being marked as

quotations, the OED Online’s definitions are indistinguishable from the rest of

the text that makes up my dissertation The difficulty in reading my

dissertation, because of the need to constantly refer to the source of the

quotations in the footnotes, re-enacts into experience the difficulty of

differentiating the constative from the performative My dissertation is as

much Coetzee and Rushdie as it is the OED Online; it is as much performative

literature as it is constative truths i.e it is citation

and myself to yet another coming of justice in yet another court of justice Just

as Waiting for the Barbarians, Midnight’s Children and Life & Times of

Michael K are examples of postcolonial literature that exceed themselves as

examples of postcolonial literature to come to be courted as examples of justice instead, my dissertation is an example of justice that exceeds itself Besides coming to court the subject and object(ive) of justice, I am also coming to court to be examined and cross-examined by the panel of

examiners-judges

Even though I claim that my coming to court the subject and

object(ive) of justice in Waiting for the Barbarians, Midnight’s Children and

Life & Times of Michael K surpasses and exceeds all preceding critical work, I

concurrently claim that my dissertation is not the last word on either Waiting

for the Barbarians or Life & Times of Michael K or Midnight’s Children In

accordance with the rule of example and the law of justice, my dissertation surpasses and exceeds all preceding critical work only insofar as it recognizes, reveals and revels in the knowledge that literature is example coming to court justice Like the example that must exceed itself in order to act as an example, justice necessarily exceeds itself in order to perform as justice While the example promises that it may be re-applied, justice promises that it may be reinforced

The excess of the example and of justice that manifests as repeatability

or iterability ensures that even as I affirm my dissertation as an exemplary

study of Coetzee and Rushdie’s Waiting for the Barbarians, Midnight’s

Children, Life & Times of Michael K and reaffirm my dissertation as an

exemplary study of justice, I also await the sentence of the panel of

examiners-judges However, as I am “[committing],” I am “[committed]” and

I will have “[committed]” to the rule of example and the law of justice, I am

“[assured]” that my dissertation’s exemplary study of Coetzee and Rushdie’s

exemplary study of justice in Waiting for the Barbarians, Midnight’s Children and Life & Times of Michael K will exceed itself as example to pass the

examination, re-examination and sentence of the panel of examiners-judges I

am coming to court justice and justice is coming to court, I promise.20

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20 OED Online, s.v “Promise,” accessed August 26, 2012,

http://www.oed.com

AN EXEMPLARY CHAPTER

OR

A ROAD THAT MAY LEAD NOWHERE

Justice: once that word is uttered, where will it all end?

Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

In J.M Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, the Magistrate repeatedly shouts “No!” Having already witnessed the flogging and about to further witness

the hammering of the prisoners in their public torture scene, he finally breaks his silence:

‘No!’ I hear the first word from my throat, rusty, not loud enough Then again: ‘No!’ This time the word rings like a bell from my chest The

soldier who blocks my way stumbles aside I am in the arena holding up

my hands to still the crowd: ‘No! No! No!’1

However, he later admits that he has shouted “No!” simply because it is “[e]asier

to shout No!” than to “[utter the word ‘justice.’]”2 While shouting “No!” in

replacement of “justice” articulates and communicates his “[dis]approval” and

“reject[ion]” of the acts of torture,3 it neither “demand[s] justice” nor “defend[s] the cause of justice.”4 Thus, the Magistrate pleads guilty to taking the easy way out of the moral high road

Yet, even as the Magistrate makes a clean breast of his failure at raising the question of justice, he paradoxically also lays bare the question of justice He

clarifies why it is “[e]asier to shout No! [e]asier to be beaten and made a martyr[,] [e]asier to lay [his] head on a block,” by pointing out: “Justice: once that word is

1 Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, 116

2 Ibid., 118

3 OED Online, s.v “No,” accessed August 26, 2012, http://www.oed.com

4 Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians,118

uttered, where will it all end?” Therefore, even as and even though he maintains

that he “shout[s] No!” in place of and instead of daring to “[utter the word

‘justice,’]” he does, as a matter of fact, “[utter the word ‘justice.’]” In addition to

“[uttering the word ‘justice’]” once in his posing of the question, “Justice: once

that word is uttered, where will it all end?” he also repeatedly “[utters the word

‘justice’]” in his simultaneous interrogation and vindication of himself: “Would I have dared to face the crowd to demand justice for these ridiculous barbarian

prisoners with their backsides in the air? Easier to lay my head on a block than

to defend the cause of justice for the barbarians” (italics mine) Later, he “[utters the word ‘justice’]” once more in his reading and interpreting of the poplar slips

for Colonel Joll:5

‘Now let us see what the next one says See, there is only a single

character It is the barbarian character war, but it has other senses too It can stand for vengeance, and, if you turn it upside down like this, it can be made to read justice There is no knowing which sense is intended That is

part of barbarian cunning.’6

Finally, he realizes: “[A] body can entertain notions of justice [italics mine]

only as long as it is whole and well,”7 “the workings of justice [italics mine] are

often obscure”8 and “all creatures come into the world bringing with them the

memory of justice [a]ll we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade” (italics mine).9 Hence, despite seeming self-contradictory to say the least and tautologically impossible even, the

Magistrate’s double acts of speech nevertheless prove that it is indeed possible for

him “to shout No!” on the one hand and to “[utter the word ‘justice’]” on the other

In this exemplary chapter, I will demonstrate that it is possible for the

Magistrate “to shout No!” and to yet also “[utter the word ‘justice’]” because of

the mode of his 1st person present tense narration.11 More importantly, I will show that his particular narrative mode doubles up to unveil and reveal him as both a

subject of énunciation and a subject of énoncé I will go on to argue that it is precisely because he is a subject of énunciation as well as a subject of énoncé that

he is, alas, also the subject in crisis I will prove my point by first examining

Empire’s inscription of him as a subject of énoncé via the force of its authority

and its application of torture, followed by discussing his resistance as a subject of

énunciation via his obsessive excavation of the poplar slips, his relentless

attempts to read them as well as his decisive and ultimate interpretation and translation of them for Colonel Joll Last but not least, I will consider him as the subject in crisis via his perplexing treatment of the barbarian girl in tandem with his bewildering dreams sequence Throughout my interrogation, I will make it clear that his subjectivity is literary i.e he is constructed and de-constructed by reading and writing Finally, having established that he is indeed a subject of

énunciation and a subject of énoncé for whom it is possible “to shout No!” as well

as to “[utter the word ‘justice,’]” I will come to his critical question: “Justice:

once that word is uttered, where will it all end?”12 Like the subject in crisis, I will

“[press] on along a road that may lead nowhere.”13

1 st Person Present Tense Narration

Concurrently the narrator who performs the function of narration on the one hand and the character who plays his role in the narrative on the other hand, the Magistrate foregrounds the problematics of speech and subjectivity

Specifically, his arguably unusual and uncommon 1st person present tense

11 Ibid

12 Ibid

13 Ibid., 170

narrative14 interrogates the speech acts of the subject of énunciation and the subject of énoncé Most obviously, as the 1st person narrator who represents, he is

the speaking subject of énunciation; as the character who is represented, he is the spoken subject of énoncé Thus, he is simultaneously the speaking subject of

énunciation and the spoken subject of énoncé

In addition, as the 1st person narrator, the Magistrate represents by

paradoxically presenting events as they occur While the conventional 3rd person narrator reports and represents past events accordingly and correspondingly in the past tense, the Magistrate resists narrative tradition by representing paradoxically and impossibly in the present tense The problematics of his present tense

narration perform as an elaborate conceit for the problematics of the narrator’s

14 The text’s mode of 1st person present tense narration has been widely

recognized, unanimously acknowledged and much debated by critics and scholars alike In the 1st seminal book-length study on Coetzee’s oeuvre, Teresa Dovey

considers both the text’s 1st person narration and present tense narration Refer to

Teresa Dovey, The Novels of J.M Coetzee (Johannesburg: Ad Donker, 1988)

Anne Waldron Neumann and Maria Boletsi follow in her wake whereas James Phelan and Ene-Reet Soovik focus solely on the text’s present tense narration See Anne Waldron Neumann, “Escaping the ‘Time of History?’ Present Tense and the

Occasion of Narration in J.M Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians,” The

Journal of Narrative Technique 20, no 1 (1990): 65-86 Refer to Maria Boletsi,

“Barbaric Encounters: Re-thinking Barbarism in C.P Cavafy’s and J.M

Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians,” Comparative Literature Studies 44, no

1-2 (2007): 67-96 Look at James Phelan, “Present Tense Narration, Mimesis, the

Narrative Norm, and the Positioning of the Reader in Waiting for the

Barbarians,” in Understanding Narrative, eds James Phelan and Peter J

Rabinowitz (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 1994), 222-245 Refer to

Ene-Reet Soovik, “Prisoners of the Present: Tense and Agency in J.M Coetzee’s

Waiting for the Barbarians and M Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale,”

Interlitteraria 8 (2003): 259-275 Matt DelConte even coins the term “Four-Wall

Present Tense” as a means of coming to terms with the narrative mode of the text Look at Matt DelConte, “A Further Study of Present Tense Narration: The

Absentee Narratee and Four-Wall Present Tense in Coetze’s Waiting for the

Barbarians and Disgrace,” Journal of Narrative Theory 37, no 3 (2007):

427-446 However, despite the significant volume of study on the text’s mode of

1st person present tense narration, it remains to be considered in relation to the subjectivity of either the Magistrate in particular or the narrator in general Hence,

I address the problematics of both the Magistrate and the narrator’s speech acts and subjectivities

speech act.15 Speaking in the customary past tense of reported speech, the 3rd

person narrator is not only omniscient but even unimaginable He is enshrined by the indirect act of his speech as the all-knowing God whom the reader takes for granted, to whom the reader does not give a second thought and therefore also whom the reader much less questions In contrast, by setting up his narrative as an irregular episode in the tradition of narrative modes, the Magistrate brings into play and into question the role and the ontology of the narrator Specifically, he unveils the usually obfuscated and obscured character of the narrator to reveal

him as an ever-present speaking subject of énunciation Like the Magistrate, the

3rd person narrator never represents, but always re-presents Regardless of

whether the 1st person narrator speaks in the present tense in particular or whether the 3rd person narrator speaks in the past tense in general, the narrator speaks —

he speaks in a subjective act of re-presentation As such, the narrator is also a character His speech act or his act of re-presentation must also be taken into account in the reading of his story Thus, the narrator re-presents himself as the

speaking subject of énunciation only insofar as he is also re-presented as the spoken subject of énoncé Once again, he is simultaneously the speaking subject

of énunciation and the spoken subject of énoncé

Similarly, as the protagonist, the Magistrate speaks as the events unfold His immediate and instantaneous act of speech is signified by the open and close inverted commas of direct speech However, while the open and close inverted commas overtly mark the Magistrate’s act of speech as direct speech, they also covertly and paradoxically perform as giveaway signs of indirect speech

15 Undeniably, present tense narration is an impossibility Teresa Dovey points

out the contradiction inherent in present tense narration: “[I]n Waiting for the

Barbarians[,] the use of an autodiegetic narrator and present verb forms means

that narrative time and narrated time are conflated to make speech and action coincide in a way which is untenable when one is operating according to the

conventions of realism ” Refer to Teresa Dovey, The Novels of J.M Coetzee

(Johannesburg: Ad Donker, 1988), 213 The act of narration necessarily re-enacts and re-presents events that have passed Yet, by making possible the impossible in his re-presentation of the present tense, the Magistrate puts to trial the traditional act of representation and makes evident the subjectivity of the traditional 3rdperson narrator

Re-enacting a speech act that has already occurred, the trademark open and close

inverted commas of direct speech are arguably more indicative of the reporting of

direct speech than of direct speech itself The Magistrate does not so much speak

as he is reported to have spoken If and when he speaks (the subject of

énunciation is necessarily always the narrator), he speaks only of speaking (such

that the protagonist is ironically always spoken for as the subject of énoncé) Thus speaking in direct speech as a subject of énunciation only insofar as he is spoken

of as such in indirect speech as a subject of énoncé, the Magistrate is, once more again, simultaneously the speaking subject of énunciation and the spoken subject

of énoncé

Repeatedly the speaking subject of énunciation and the spoken subject of

énoncé at the same time, it is then not only possible for the Magistrate “to shout No!” and to yet also “[utter the word ‘justice’]” but it is even necessary that he

commits the twofold acts of speech.16 As the protagonist who immediately and

instantaneously shouts “No!” in direct reaction to the imminent hammering of the prisoners, the Magistrate is a speaking subject of énunciation; as the protagonist whose act of shouting “No!” is repeatedly reported and indirectly re-enacted by the narrator, the Magistrate is a spoken subject of énoncé.17 As the narrator who

“[utters the word ‘justice,’]”18 the Magistrate is a speaking subject of énunciation;

as the narrator who is rendered by his utterances as also character, the Magistrate

is a spoken subject of énoncé Once more and once more again the speaking subject of énunciation and the subject of énoncé, it is simply and tautologically

impossible for the Magistrate to either not commit a speech act as the speaking

subject of énunciation or not commit a speech act as the spoken subject of

énoncé His shouting of “No!”19 and “[utterance of the word ‘justice’]”20 are un-negotiable acts

As imperatives, his “[shouts of No!]”21 and “[utterances of the word

‘justice’]”22 are disciplinary forces of law He shouts “No!”23 to halt the

“disgrace[ful]”24 hammering at hand; he “[utters the word ‘justice’]” in meditation and in rumination on “an archaic code of gentlemanly behaviour towards captured foes,” or in other words, in recall of “the rule of law.”25 However, as “the [old] rule of law” is now “the new science of degradation” according to the higher authority of Joll and Empire, the Magistrate who is the “defender of the [outdated, outmoded and obsolete] rule of law” is then correspondingly and unfortunately only another newfound and latest “enemy in his own way of the State.”26 Alas, the

Magistrate, who must repeatedly shout “No!”27 and “[utter the word ‘justice’]”28

as both the speaking subject of énunciation and the spoken subject of énoncé, is

the irrevocable and irretrievable subject in crisis

Subject Of Énoncé

As the Magistrate, he is Empire’s subject Posted to the “lazy frontier”29

“since [he] was a young man,”30 he “[serves out his days as a country magistrate,

a responsible official in the service of Empire who] collect[s] the tithes and taxes, administer[s] the communal lands, see[s] that the garrison is provided for,

supervise[s] the junior officers , keep[s] an eye on trade, preside[s] over the law-court twice a week.”31 Living his life in accordance with the role designated

by Empire and in fulfillment of the duties assigned to him by Empire, the

Magistrate is a function and an embodiment of Empire and its force of law

Notably, he has no name His identity is subject to Empire’s definition of him i.e

he is none other than the Magistrate Thus represented by Empire and its force of

law as no more than a representation of Empire and its force of law, the

Magistrate is the subservient subject of énoncé

Compliant as Empire’s subject, the Magistrate’s loyalty is paradoxically put to trial only when Empire subjugates the Other While Empire’s infamous but secret torture of the old man and his nephew, the fishing people and the barbarian girl are all instances of Empire’s subjugation of the barbarians in general, it is Empire’s notoriously public torture of the barbarian prisoners that makes most evident its identification and definition of the barbarians as the Other in particular When Colonel Joll acting in agency of Empire “[stoops] over each prisoner in turn [to rub] a handful of dust into his naked back and [to write] a word with a stick of charcoal : ENEMY ENEMY ENEMY ENEMY,”32 he literally inscribes to figuratively ascribe in no uncertain terms the label of

opposition to the barbarians

Empire then exerts and executes the force of its law to first punish, then

to eradicate and exterminate those whom it has named as its absolute Other For being the “ENEMY,” or in other words, for being the absolute Other, the

barbarians are “[beaten with] stout green staves [brought] down with heavy

slapping sounds of washing-paddles [that] raise red welts on their backs and buttocks till the black charcoal and ochre dust began to run with sweat and blood.”33 “The game is to beat them till their backs are washed clean” because all signs of them as Empire’s “ENEMY” and all traces of them as the absolute Other must be erased.34 By making a show of eradicating and exterminating its

“ENEMY,”35 Empire represents itself as “[taking] precautionary measures”36 as well as addressing “the concern that the barbarian tribes of the north and west

might at last be uniting.”37 More importantly, Empire proves itself the

uncontested victor in the war with the devastated barbarian Other In short, Empire reconstructs and reinstates itself via exerting and re-asserting the force of its law

Therefore, when the Magistrate provides food, medical care and shelter that have been denied by Empire as part of its torture of the boy, the fishing people and the barbarian girl, he is defying Empire and questioning its right of law Besides quietly providing that which has been denied, the Magistrate also shouts: “Who told you to leave the body there? Who sewed it up?”38 “How do you explain this? How can you bring them back here?”39 “Did no one tell him these are fishing people? Do these people look like a danger to Empire?”40

“[D]id no one tell him these prisoners are useless to him? Did no one tell him the difference between fishermen with nets and wild nomad horsemen with bows? Did no one tell him they don’t even speak the same language?”41 While the Magistrate appears to be seeking to understand the treatment and the capture of the prisoners from the guards and the soldiers, he is in fact obviously and

rhetorically ranting against Joll and ridiculing his orders Thus “[disparaging] officer in front of men”42 by questioning his right of law, the Magistrate openly defies Empire which Joll personifies

Likewise, when the Magistrate speaks up and speaks out against

Empire’s public torture of the barbarian prisoners, he comes face to face with Empire in challenge of its right of law While Empire justifies its torture of the barbarian prisoners by identifying and defining them as the “ENEMY,”43 the Magistrate questions Empire’s justification for torturing them by arguing for their

shared humanity Shouting: “You! You are depraving these people!”44

[underscores mine], he builds his case by first drawing attention to the humanity

of the crowd Continuing, “Look! Look! We are the great miracle of creation! Look at this men! Men!”45 (italics mine), he appeals to the humanity of the crowd to recognize and acknowledge the barbarian prisoners as the same Thus speaking out to figuratively inscribe against the literal inscription

of Empire, the Magistrate confronts Empire to contest its right of law

Blatantly disobeying and defying Empire’s force of law, the Magistrate

is then accused of “treasonously consorting with the enemy,”46 and “[in his own way, an enemy] of the State.”47 Arguably, he is even more of a threat than the barbarians to Empire While the barbarians are the absolute Other whom Empire may eradicate and exterminate in defense and in preservation of itself, the

disobedient and defiant subject is a part of the whole that is Empire As such, Empire cannot do away with the disobedient and defiant subject without at least diminishing and destabilizing or even damaging and destroying itself Hence, Empire’s torture of the Magistrate is not so much an act of annihilation as it is a violent reinforcement of its subjects Empire cross-examines and punishes its disobedient and defiant subject in particular to discipline the rest of its subjects in general

When the Magistrate “had jurisdiction over the garrison,”48 he lectured on law and justice:

‘We cannot just do as we wish We are all subject to the law, which is greater than any of us I, myself, you — we are all subject to the law You feel that it is unjust, I know You think you know what is just and what is not I understand We all think we know But we live

in a world of laws a world of the second-best There is nothing we can

do about that We are fallen creatures All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.’49

While his lecture is obviously an ironic and ominous foreshadow of his downfall

as the Magistrate, it is perhaps less clearly but indisputably also a legal statement

It unequivocally and repeatedly lays down the law: “We are all subject to the law I, myself, you — we are all subject to the law.”50 The law asserts that the law

is a re-assertion of the law The Magistrate is then the “exemplary spectacle”51 of the law Whether he is the Magistrate or not, he is “subject to the law.”52 When he

is the Magistrate, he has no choice but to exert and execute Empire’s force of law Despite “the uneasy shame [he] felt , [leaving] the courtroom and [returning]

to his apartment and [sitting] in the rocking-chair in the dark all evening, without appetite, until it was time to go to bed , he continued in his duties.”53 When

he is the errant subject, he suffers Empire’s re-assertion of the full force of its law

Firstly, he is reduced by Empire’s torture to “no more than a pile of blood, bone and meat that is unhappy,”54 “[a naked body that jerks] about for their amusement,”55 “a body that knows itself damaged perhaps beyond repair and roars its fright,”56 “a body which can[not] entertain notions of justice [for it is no longer] whole and well, [a body] which very soon forgets [its crusade for justice] when its head is gripped and a pipe is pushed down its gullet and pints of salt water are poured into it till it coughs and retches and flails and voids itself,”57 or

in other words, to “simply being a body that feels itself sick and wants to be

well.”58 Thus “subject[ed] to the most rudimentary needs of [his] body: to drink,

to relieve itself, to find the posture in which it is least sore,”59 the Magistrate relinquishes his ideal of justice and surrenders to corporeality

Secondly, the Magistrate is reduced to an animal He “build[s] [his] day unreasonably around the hours when [he is] fed [He] guzzle[s] [his] food like a

dog.”60 He admits that “[a] bestial life is turning [him] into a beast.”61 It even

“[seems to him that] [t]here is no way of dying allowed [for him] except like a dog in a corner.”62

Thirdly, the Magistrate is reduced to being a woman Before his

mock-hanging in public, “[he is handed] a woman’s calico smock” and told to

“[p]ut it on.” His emasculation strips him of whatever dignity he may have had left and diminishes him to a figure of ridicule Upon seeing him with the smock

“reach[ing] halfway down [his] thighs , the two youngest maids [duck] back into the kitchen, dissolving in giggles.”63

Last but not least, he is reduced to a barbarian Empire’s torture of the Magistrate alienates him from the rest of its subjects and aligns him with the Other “[Dangling from the tree, bellowing again and again,]”64 earns him no sympathy from the crowd Instead, “[someone observes that he is calling his barbarian friends.]”65 His “roaring [and] shouting” are jeered at and derided as

[that] the meaning of humanity”69 is the meaning of subjectivity: to be human is

to be Empire’s subject; to be anything else Other than Empire’s subject is to be less than human Illustrating its lesson in humanity, or rather, its lesson in

subjectivity with “[spectacular examples]”70 of the disobedient and defiant

Magistrate incarnated in variations of that which is less than human, Empire makes a show of the force of its law so as to re-assert and reinforce its subjugation

of the Magistrate as well as the rest of its spectator-subjects Thus sadistically and violently enforced and reinforced by Empire, the Magistrate is the irreparably deformed and incredibly perverse embodiment of Empire and its unquestionable

force of law The Magistrate is the tortured subject of énoncé

Subject Of Énunciation

While Empire subjugates the Magistrate via the force of its authority and its application of torture, the Magistrate in turn resists Empire’s subjugation — first vaguely via his obsessive excavation and relentless explication of the ruins and the poplar slips in general; then distinctly and definitively via his decisive and ultimate interpretation and translation of them for Joll in particular Excavating

“the ruins of houses that date back to times long before the western provinces were annexed and the fort was built,” the Magistrate literally searches for a

civilization other than Empire “[S]everal of the largest structures stand[ing] out like a shipwreck in the desert, visible even from the town walls,” as well as

“the heavy poplar lintel, carved with a design of interlaced leaping fish that now hangs over [his] fireplace” act as evidence of and bear witness to the

impermanence of Empire and its rule While the ruins establish the existence of a prior civilization, they also prove that the ruins of a civilization outlast the

69 Ibid., 126

70 Ibid., 114

civilization itself Thus the Magistrate publicly but silently reminds himself and the rest of Empire’s subjects.71

In addition, the Magistrate speculates on the construction, the drive and the collapse of the civilization long gone by He symbolically reconstructs and re-invents the fallen civilization as Empire so as to re-enact its inevitable and inescapable destruction:

I do not know where the wood came from to build these houses Perhaps

in bygone days criminals, slaves, soldiers trekked the twelve miles to the river, and cut down poplar trees, and sawed and planed them, and

transported the timbers back to this barren place in carts, and built

houses, and a fort too, for all I know, and in the course of time died, so that their masters, their prefects and magistrates and captains, could climb the roofs and towers morning and evening to scan the world from horizon to horizon for signs of the barbarians Perhaps in my digging I have only scratched the surface Perhaps ten feet below the floor lie the ruins of another fort, razed by the barbarians, peopled with the bones of folk who thought they would find safety behind high walls Perhaps when I stand on the floor of the courthouse, if that is what it is, I stand over the head of a magistrate like myself, another grey-haired servant of Empire who fell in the arena of his authority, face to face at last with the barbarian How will I ever know?72

Thus pre-figuring the fall of Empire, the Magistrate plays out his taboo fantasy

He is as privately desirous of the end of Empire that subjugates and shackles him

as its Magistrate-subject as he is secretly hopeful of the retaliation and revenge of the barbarians upon Empire that subjugates, delineates and alienates them as the Other Clearly then, the Magistrate’s obsessive excavation of the ruins is a

carefully restrained but irrefutably mutinous act against Empire Even though he

remains subjugated under Empire as its subject of énoncé, he also resists Empire’s subjugation as a subject of énunciation

Likewise, the Magistrate “[set about collecting all the poplar slips he can,

in the hope of deciphering the characters of a script painted on them.]”73

Discovering and uncovering the slips so as to recover its lost language, the

71 Ibid., 15

72 Ibid., 16

73 Ibid., 15-16

Magistrate attempts to reconstruct and regain knowledge of the prior civilization

He wonders, “How will I ever know? Will the characters on the slips one day tell me?”74 He admits to tirelessly trying to crack the code:

There were two hundred and fifty-six slips in the bag Is it by chance that the number is perfect? After I had first counted them and made this

discovery I cleared the floor of my office and laid them out, first in one great square, then in sixteen smaller squares, then in other combinations, thinking that what I had hitherto taken to be characters in a syllabary might in fact be elements of a picture whose outline would leap at me if I struck on the right arrangement: a map of the land of the barbarians in olden times, or a representation of a lost pantheon I have even found myself reading the slips in a mirror, or tracing one on top of another, or conflating half of one with half of another.75

However, the lost civilization remains as unknown and un-recovered as its language is unknow-able and irrecoverable Randomly reading the characters of the script as constituent “[syllables]” of a language, as “[pictorial elements]” of either a “map” or an obscure “representation,”76 as laterally-inversed,

superimposed, bisected ciphers and cryptograms, the Magistrate is as clueless as when he first discovered and uncovered the “bag that crumbled to nothing as soon

as it was touched.”77 Even though “[t]he characters on the new slips are as clear as the day they were written,” they may as well have been “bleached by the action of sand [such] that the writing [is] illegible.”78 He further confesses and guesses:

I do not even know whether to read from right to left or from left to right

In the long evenings I spent poring over my collection I isolated over four hundred different characters in the script, perhaps as many as four hundred

and fifty I have no idea what they stand for [italics mine] Does each

stand for a single thing, a circle for the sun, a triangle for a woman, a wave for a lake; or does a circle merely stand for ‘circle,’ a triangle for

‘triangle,’ a wave for ‘wave’? Does each sign represent a different state of tongue, the lips, the throat, the lungs, as they combine in the uttering of some multifarious unimaginable extinct barbarian language? Or are my

four hundred characters nothing but scribal embellishments of an

underlying repertory of twenty or thirty whose primitive forms I am too stupid to see?79

Despite his examination and cross-examination of the slips, “[t]he sign did not come.”80

Yet, the Magistrate is able to extensively “explain what the messages say and who the parties are.”81 He “[interprets and translates]”82 them in elaborate details for Joll:

‘He sends greeting to his daughter [w]hom he says he has not seen for a long time He hopes she is happy and thriving He hopes the lambing season has been good He has a gift for her, he says, which he will keep till her sees her again He sends his love It is not easy to read his

signature It could be simply “Your father” or it could be something else, a name.’83

‘This one reads as follows “I am sorry I must send bad news The soldiers came and took your brother away I have been to the fort every day to plead for his return I sit in the dust with my head bare Yesterday for the first time they sent a man to speak to me He says your brother is

no longer here He says he has been sent away ‘Where?’ I asked, but he would not say Do not tell your mother, but join me in praying for his safety.”’84

‘And now let us see what this next one says “We went to fetch your brother yesterday They showed us into a room where he lay on a table sewn up in a sheet They wanted me to take him away like that, but I insisted on looking first ‘What if it is the wrong body you are giving me?’

I said — ‘You have so many bodies here, bodies of brave young men.’ So

I opened the sheet and saw that it was indeed he Through each eyelid, I saw, there was a stitch ‘Why have you done that?’ I said ‘It is our

custom,’ he said I tore the sheet wide open and saw bruises all over his body, and saw that his feet were swollen and broken ‘What happened to him?’ I said ‘I do not know,’ said the man, ‘it is not on the paper; if you have questions you must go to the sergeant, but he is very busy.’ We have

had to bury your brother here, outside their fort, because he was beginning

to stink Please tell your mother and try to console her.”’85

‘Now let us see what the next one says See, there is only a single

character It is the barbarian character war, but it has other senses too It can stand for vengeance, and, if you turn it upside down like this, it can be made to read justice There is no knowing which sense is intended That is

part of barbarian cunning.’86

Alluding first to the intimate and carefree relationship between the

barbarian girl and her father who has been brutally tortured and desperately driven

to suicide by Empire, then to the mindless destruction and pitiless deaths wrecked upon the barbarians by Empire’s violent separation and merciless torture of them, and last but not least to the barbarians’ single-minded retaliation and revenge upon Empire followed by Empire’s inevitable and inescapable downfall, the Magistrate “form[s] an allegory.”87 He holds out the hermeneutical key to his allegorical labyrinth:

‘It is the same with the rest of these slips They form an allegory [italics mine] They can be read in many orders Further, each single slip

can be read in many ways Together they can be read as a domestic

journal, or they can be read as a plan of war, or they can be turned on their sides and read as a history of the last years of Empire — the old Empire, I mean There is no agreement among scholars about how to interpret these relics of the ancient barbarians Allegorical sets like this one can be found buried all over the desert their writings are open to many

interpretations.’88

While the Magistrate is overtly making a literal reference to how the slips may be interpreted in general, he is covertly letting it slip that he is making a figurative,

or rather, an allegorical allusion to how his interpretations of the slips may be

interpreted in particular The slips “form an allegory” only insofar as his

interpretations of the slips form an[other] allegory.”89 Making evident the parallels

between his interpretations of the slips and the current state of affairs between Empire and the barbarians, he obliquely criticizes and denounces Empire’s war against the barbarians, foretells the barbarians’ retaliation and revenge upon Empire, and prophesizes Empire’s ultimate downfall

The Magistrate’s allegories are clearly recognized and even

acknowledged as such by Empire’s officials Despite his interpretation and

translation of messages on the slips, “[t]he warrant officer, who sits behind Joll with a little notebook open on his knee [and his pencil poised above the paper, only stares hard at him.]”90 After “not [writing] anything [and] not [stirring,]”91the warrant officer finally “closes his notebook and half-rises , ready to strike [him.]”92 Realizing that the Magistrate is in fact neither interpreting nor

translating, but for all intents and purposes enacting allegories, the warrant officer

is first stunned into inaction, then provoked into reaction

Likewise, when Joll tells the Magistrate, “You have no idea how tiresome your behaviour is You are the one and only official we have had to work with on the frontier who has not given us his fullest co-operation,”93 he is undoubtedly referring to the latter’s repetitively resistant and antagonistic act of allegory While Joll has previously assigned significance to the slips, he now counteracts the Magistrate’s act of allegory by dismissing the slips At the beginning of their interview, he presents the slips in extensive details and downright demands that the Magistrate accounts for them:

‘Among the items found in your apartment was this wooden chest I would like you to consider it Its contents are unusual It contains approximately three hundred slips of white poplar-wood, each about eight inches by two inches, many of them wound about with lengths of string The wood is dry and brittle Some of the string is new, some so old that it has perished

If one loosens the string one finds that the slip splits open revealing two flat inner surfaces These surfaces are written on in an unfamiliar script

A reasonable inference is that the wooden slips contain messages passed between yourself and other parties, we do not know when It

remains for you to explain what the messages say and who the other parties are.”94

However, by the time the Magistrate “[has] finished [interpreting and]

translating” the messages on the slips via allegories, Joll turns around to gainsay,

“Candidly, I must tell you I am not interested in these sticks They are very likely gambling-sticks I know that other tribes on the border gamble with

sticks.”95

Therefore, even though the Magistrate never cracks the code to figure out the characters of the script painted on the slips, he nevertheless comes to the realization that “writings are open to many interpretations.”96 Or in other words, writings “form an allegory [that] can be read in many orders [and] many ways[;] [t]here is no agreement among scholars about how to interpret.”97 As such, he is able to re-enact in the spaces between interpretations an-Other “order” and an-Other “way” of reading, or more specifically, an-Other interpretation.98 In short, the Magistrate re-invents an-Other language Speaking in the hermeneutics of allegory to speak up against Empire’s officious aphorisms of authority and violent messages of torture, the Magistrate then covertly and overtly resists Empire’s

sentencing of him as a subject of énoncé to instead implicitly and explicitly

reinstate himself as the standalone and struggling subject of énunciation

Subject In Crisis

On the one hand the subject of énoncé designated and tortured by

Empire, on the other hand the subject of énunciation who speaks up and speaks

out against Empire, the Magistrate is the subject in crisis The tension between his

conflicting subjectivities as the subject of énoncé and as the subject of

énunciation is played out most obviously and most painfully in his relation to the

barbarian girl and re-played perhaps not as apparently but without doubt just as unbearably in his repetitive dreams sequence

While the Magistrate takes in the barbarian girl on the pretext of

“[offering her] work”99 and shelter both out of the kindness of his heart and so as

to preserve “vagrancy ordinances”100 in his role as the Magistrate, “[he knows he is] beating about the bush”101 “[excusing himself]”102 just as much as “[s]he understands what [he is] offering.”103 He is “sick at [him]self”104 because his act

of benevolence and munificence as well as his execution of magisterial duty are in fact motivated by “erotic impulse”105 and driven by sexual “desire.”106 Besides

“[sweeping and dusting his apartment in the morning, helping] in the kitchen with the midday meal,”107 “[washing dishes, peeling vegetables, helping to bake bread and prepare the humdrum round of porridge, soup and stew that the solders are fed for part of the day,]”108 “[scouring the pots and pans, washing the floor, and dampening the fire after the evening meal,]”109 she is expected to “[leave] her fellows and [pick] her way up the stairs to [him, undress] and [lie] down [to wait]

for [his] inexplicable attentions at night.”110 Thus “[relieving the barbarian girl] of the shame of begging [by installing] her in the barracks kitchen as a

scullery-maid,” the Magistrate facilitates and necessitates her “[sixteen easy steps from the kitchen to his bed.]”111

Ironically, when the Magistrate tries to convince the barbarian girl that

“this is not what [she] think[s] it is,” while knowing very well that he is “about to excuse [himself]” for exactly “what [she] think[s] it is,” it is paradoxically indeed neither “what [he nor she] think[s] it is.”112 Just as the barbarian girl “understands [that the Magistrate is offering]”113 her “[food and shelter in exchange for her yielding of her body for his use,]”114 the Magistrate believes that his offer of food and shelter is motivated by “[t]he erotic impulse”115 and driven by his sexual

“desire”116 for her However, “[f]rom the beginning [his] desire has not taken on that direction, that directedness.”117 He confesses:

I have not entered her.118

I feel no desire to enter this stocky little body 119

I sit beside her stroking her body, waiting for a flush of blood that never truly comes.120

[A]lways , [t]he erotic impulse, if that is what it has been, withers; with surprise I see myself clutched to this stolid girl, unable to remember what I ever desired in her 121

There is no link I can define between her womanhood and my desire I cannot even say for sure that I desire her All this erotic behaviour of mine

is indirect: I prowl about her, touching her face, caressing her body,

without entering her or finding the urge to do so.122

Even when she seduces him, he remains un-aroused:

The foot stirs in my grip, comes alive, pokes gently into my groin I open

my eyes to the naked golden body on the bed She lies with her head cradled in her arms, watching me in the indirect way I am by now used to, showing off her firm breasts and her sleek belly, brimming with young animal health Her toes continue to probe; but in this slack old gentleman kneeling before her in his plum dressing-gown they find no response

‘Another time,’ I say, my tongue curling stupidly around the words As far as I know this is a lie, but I utter it: ‘Another time, perhaps.’ Then I lift her leg aside and stretch out beside her She slips open my gown and begins to fondle me After a while I push her hand away.123

When he finally and consciously124 decides to sexually penetrate her, his sexual desire for her recedes before the completion of the sexual act:

In the snowbound warmth of the tent I make love to her again She is passive, accommodating herself to me When we begin I am sure that the time is right; I embrace her in the most intense pleasure and pride

of life; but halfway through I seem to lose touch with her, and the act peters out vacantly There will be another time, and if not, I do not think I mind.125

Further admitting, “What this woman beside me is doing in my life I cannot comprehend”126 and “I know what to do with her no more than one cloud

in the sky knows what to do with another,”127 the Magistrate is forced to

Magistrate’s subjectivity in relation to his state of unconsciousness in my

discussion of his dreams sequence later on

125 Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, 71-72

126 Ibid., 50

127 Ibid., 36

“[interrogate his masquerade of desire.]”128 The object(ive) of his desire is

certainly questionable Instead of directly and sexually penetrating her, he

indirectly and repeatedly washes, oils and rubs her He begins with her feet:

‘Show me your feet,’ I say in the new thick voice that seems to be mine She neither helps nor hinders me I work at the thongs and eyelets of the coat, throw it open, pull the boots off I leave the room,

go downstairs to the kitchen, come back with a basin and a pitcher of warm water ‘You should sit,’ I say I help her off with the coat, seat her on the stool, pour water into the basin, and begin to wash her feet

I wash slowly, working up a lather, gripping her firm-fleshed calves, manipulating the bones and tendons of her feet, running my fingers

between her toes I change my position to kneel not in front of her but beside her, so that holding a leg between elbow and side, I can caress the foot with both hands I dry the right foot, shuffle to the other side, lift the leg of the wide drawers above the knee and begin to wash the left foot.129

I seat her, fill the basin, roll the drawers above her knees I begin to wash her I knead and massage the lax toes through the soft milky soap When I have washed her feet I begin to wash her legs My hands run up and down her legs from ankle to knee, back and forth, squeezing, stroking, moulding

Sometimes my fingers run behind her knees, tracing the tendons, pressing into the hollows between them Light as feather they stray up the backs of her thighs

I help her to the bed and dry her with a warm towel I begin to pare and clean her toenails 130

He then progresses to the rest of her body:

First comes the ritual of the washing, for which she is now naked I wash her feet, as before, her legs, her buttocks My soapy hand travels between her thighs, incuriously, I find She raises her arms while I wash her

armpits I wash her belly, her breasts I push her hair aside and wash her neck, her throat I rinse and dry her

She lies on the bed and I rub her body with almond oil.131

One evening, [I rub] her scalp with oil, [massage] her temples and forehead 132

Thus desiring nothing from her other than to wash, oil and rub her, the Magistrate appears to be performing an elaborate and extended act of devotion and penitence Alluding to Jesus Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet at the last supper, the Magistrate’s act of cleansing likewise honours, reveres and venerates the barbarian girl However, whilst Christ is the Saviour, the Magistrate’s act of purification inversely anoints the barbarian girl as his saviour instead Also

reminiscent of Mary when she washes Christ’s feet with her tears, wipes them dry with her hair and oils them with perfume, the Magistrate atones for his sin of complicity with Empire While he has previously permitted and even facilitated Empire’s torture of her on the grounds of feigned ignorance133 and of being bound

by his duty as Empire’s “[servant,]”134 he now attempts to symbolically erase the

torture marks on her body and to restore her to a tabula rasa unmarked by

Empire’s torture In so doing, he redeems himself Hence, his salvation of the barbarian girl from begging on the streets and his subsequent worshipping of her

as his saviour serve only to make possible his own salvation

Even then, the likelihood of his salvation is doubtful In addition to

expressing his remorse and assuaging his guilt via washing, rubbing and oiling the

132 Ibid., 33

133 The Magistrate first denies the role he played in permitting and facilitating Empire’s torture of the prisoners: “Of the screaming which people afterwards claim to have heard from the granary, I heard nothing.” He then further defends himself: “At every moment that evening as I go about my business I am aware of what might be happening, and my ear is even tuned to the pitch of human pain But the granary is a massive building with heavy doors and tiny windows; it lies beyond the abattoir and the mill in the south quarter Also what was once an outpost and then a fort on the frontier has grown into an agricultural settlement, a town of three thousand souls in which the noise of life, the noise that all these souls make on a warm summer evening, does not cease because somewhere someone is crying.” However, he finally admits: “(At a certain point I begin to plead my own cause.)” His eventual admission to his denial of responsibility is paradoxically and conclusively tantamount to his assumption of responsibility for his complicity with Empire in its torture of the prisoners Refer to Coetzee,

Waiting for the Barbarians, 5

134 Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, 6