Literature and the Crisis in the Humanities:
J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello
(Miller)
BA Honors Thesis
Language and Culture Studies
Utrecht University
Aster Hoving 3868184
Supervisor: dr. Barnita Bagchi
Second Assessor: dr. Paul Franssen
Word count: 18.208
American English
16 February 2017
Abstract
In this thesis, the effects of South African author J.M. Coetzee’s novels Disgrace and
Elizabeth Costello on both the socio-political and academic debate on the contemporary
functions of the Humanities, in comparison to non-fictional criticism, are explored. This
project requires more than only literary analysis. Therefore, this thesis is structured around
three different textual categories affiliated with the author-figure Coetzee: interviews, essays,
and fiction. These three different textual types require three distinct theoretical frameworks of
analysis. In Chapter one, Interviews with Coetzee are read in the light of the deconstructivist
tradition. In Chapter two, Coetzee’s essays are placed within their historical context:
neoliberal, post-Apartheid South Africa. To come to a better understanding of the
contemporary situation of higher education in South Africa, particular attention is given to the
political economy of higher education since the colonial period. In the literary analysis of
Chapter three, a combination of attention to both form and context allows for an exploration
of both the social structure out of which works by Coetzee arise and to which they react and
the specific characteristics of literature. The three-fold approach of this thesis leads to the
conclusion that, in the case of Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee’s literary writing has three distinct
effects which prove literature to be a fruitful intervention in the practice of regular, nonfictional criticism. Firstly, literature is more accessible than academic critique. Secondly,
Elizabeth Costello elucidates the global scope required to understand the contemporary
functions of the university and shows that the present situation of the Humanities, in
globalized neoliberal capitalism, might be a call for a more globally oriented or even
universal Humanities. Thirdly, literature can not only react to existing social structures but
also inspire to create alternatives to that social reality. Therefore, Elizabeth Costello, in
comparison to Disgrace, also is a new mode of Coetzee’s commitment to academia.
Keywords: Coetzee, Criticism, Crisis, Debt, Deleuze, Disgrace, Elizabeth Costello,
Globalization, Hope, Humanities, Literature, Neocolonialism, Neoliberalism, Singularity,
South Africa, Universities.
Table of Contents
Introduction……………………………………………..………………………………...1
J.M. Coetzee……………………………………...………...…….…………….………......4
Theoretical Position and Method……………………………………...…………………...5
1. The Peculiar Situation of an Author-Figure Inspired by Deconstruction..…..…...8
1.1 Attridge and Derrida: The Singularity of Literature……………….………………..…8
1.2 Interviews: Coetzee and the Political Potential of Literature……………...……...….10
2. Coetzee’s Response to Developments in South African Higher Education after
Apartheid………………………………………..…………………………………...15
2.1 A Neoliberal Utopia……………………………..……..……………………..………15
2.2 Post-Apartheid South Africa………………………………………………………….17
2.3 The Political Economy of South African Universities: Colonialism and
Neocolonialism………………………………………….……………………………18
2.4 Essays: Coetzee’s Response…………………………………………...…….……….21
3. The Novel as Both Creative Critique and Productive Intervention: Disgrace and
Elizabeth Costello……………………………….……………………………………26
3.1 An International Discussion: What Crisis in the Humanities? ……..………...…...…26
3.2 Deleuze and Lazzarato: Governing by Debt…………………………….….……...…28
3.3 Defending the Humanities………………………………………….…...…..………..29
3.4 Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello……………………………...………………………30
3.5 Disgrace………………………………………………………………………………31
3.5.1 The Neoliberal University…………………………………...………...……...…..32
3.5.2 Crisis and Dissent………………………………………...……....………………34
3.5.3 The Humanities in South Africa…………………….……………...….…………37
3.5.4 Disgrace: Hope……………………………………...………....…………………41
3.6 Elizabeth Costello…………………………………….………………………………42
3.6.1 “The Humanities in Africa” …………………...……………...……………….…45
3.6.2 Bridget……………………………………………………….……………………46
3.6.3 Academia…………………………………………...….…………………………48
3.6.4 Elizabeth Costello: Hope…………………………………..……………………..50
3.7 Hope in Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello: A Comparison………...……...….………52
4. Conclusion……………………………………………………………..………….…56
Works Cited…………………………………………………………….....………..……59
Hoving 1
Introduction
Indeed, just as the corporation replaces the factory, perpetual training tends to replace
the school, and continuous control to replace the examination. Which is the surest way of
delivering the school over to the corporation. (Deleuze 5)
Higher education is now up to the administrators. And sooner or later, research, too, will
be up to the administrators. Of course, we know that the administrators are merely in the
service of the managers of society and the economy, who exercise their supreme authority
vested in the transnational corporate world. When do we begin to fight back? And how
do we – the workers in Dayton, Ohio, and those of us in the university – form an alliance?
(Miyoshi 267)
In 1992, philosopher Gilles Deleuze predicts that in the twenty-first-century, schools will be in
the service of businesses. At the end of the same decade, this prediction seems to have come
true. In 1998, literary scholar Masao Miyoshi writes an essay on how universities are forced to
function according to the demands of the market and on how universities themselves resemble
corporations. Miyoshi connects these developments to the place of the university in a globalized
neoliberal economy (254). Miyoshi states that this globalized economy, which he defines as
transnational corporatism, should be understood as a continuation, or even outgrowth, of
colonialism (247). Therefore, the term globalization does not refer to a world in which all
countries are connected (otherwise the world would have been globalized for about twohundred years), or to a world in which all countries participate equally in a global economy.
Instead, Miyoshi argues, it refers to a world in which industrial development is extremely
uneven and in which the benefits of industrial capital are restricted to a few (249).
Hoving 2
In 2015, nearly two decades after Miyoshi’s essay was published, the New University
movement in the Netherlands once again sought to bring the discussion on the increasing
influence of the market on higher education into the light of public attention. At the time,
research by the author of this thesis concentrated on the Dutch context. However, as Miyoshi
makes clear, to understand the increasing influence of economics on universities, an
international perspective which takes the neocolonial nature of transnational corporatism into
account is required. Therefore, this thesis concentrates on the Humanities and the university in
South Africa, a former Dutch and British colony, to elucidate the global scope necessary to
understand the contemporary economic, political and social functions of the university. John
Maxwell Coetzee is a South African author who has published critiques on the present role of
the academy. Through an analysis of both Coetzee as an author-figure and the author’s essays
and fictional work, this thesis seeks to answer the following research question:
What are the effects Coetzee’s novels Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello on both the
socio-political and academic debate on the contemporary functions of the Humanities in
comparison to non-fictional criticism?
The former research question is shaped by a two-fold aim, which is to offer both a deepened
understanding of the value of literature for society and an understanding of the socio-political
potential of the academic study of literature and humanistic inquiry in general.
The research question of this thesis is answered through the analysis of three different
textual categories affiliated with the author-figure Coetzee: interviews, essays, and fiction.
These three distinct textual types require three different modes of analysis. The first chapter,
which features interviews with Coetzee, concentrates on theories regarding formal literary
qualities and Chapter two, which centers around essays by Coetzee, focuses on the historical
context of these pieces. In Chapter three, both literary form and historical context are taken into
consideration in the analysis of Coetzee’s fictional work.
Hoving 3
Chapter one contains readings of three interviews with Coetzee. Firstly, the interview
with Coetzee critic Jane Poyner in her book J.M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual,
secondly, the interview with Joanna Scott in the magazine Salmagundi, and thirdly, multiple
interviews with Coetzee critic David Attwell in Doubling the Point. The exploration of
interviews with Coetzee in the light of writings by literary theorists Derek Attridge and Jacques
Derrida, and thereby an understanding of the deconstructivist thought of these two authors,
yields an understanding of Coetzee’s intellectual heritage and his statements on literature and
literary criticism.
In Chapter two, Coetzee’s essays are placed in their historical context. To contextualize
the essays “Critic and Citizen: A Response” and “J.M. Coetzee: Universities Head for
Extinction,” this chapter features a conceptual definition of neoliberalism and its utopian
premises. This theoretical discussion is followed by an assessment of both the implementation
of neoliberal policies in post-Apartheid South Africa and the political economy of higher
education in Africa since the colonial period.
Chapter three features readings of two novels by Coetzee, published shortly before and
after Coetzee’s retirement from the University of Cape Town in 2002: Disgrace and Elizabeth
Costello. In this analysis, both the literary form and the historical context of the works is equally
important. Thereby, attention is paid to both the way the works react to the historical
background in which they were published and to the formal effects of literature.
Furthermore, in Chapter three, the South African orientation of this thesis is extended
to an international scope by discussing how the contemporary state of the Humanities has been
a matter of debate among academics in other geographical regions of the world and how they
have sought to defend the Humanities against market-oriented conceptions of education.
Hoving 4
J.M. Coetzee
This section introduces Coetzee’s diverse oeuvre as both an academic, essayist, author-figure
and author of fiction. In 2003, when Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature, media
described him as “recluse,” and stated that the judges chose him while knowing that he might
not even show up at the dinner, since “no living author guards his privacy more jealously”
(Smith np.). Coetzee is not only reclusive regarding his privacy, but moreover notoriously
unwilling to comment on the political content or meaning of his novels.
If one understands writing as a necessarily public activity, as Poyner for example does,
this means that Coetzee places himself deliberately in the public domain while paradoxically
avoiding speaking about his politics (J.M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual 2).
Coetzee’s dislike of political discourse has yielded him accusations of being ethically at fault,
and moreover, a marginal position within South Africa because important political
organizations during and after Apartheid advocated for the use of literature as a weapon of
struggle (Attridge, J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event 197, Poyner,
J.M. Coetzee and the Idea 3-4). In 2002, Coetzee emigrated to Australia and took up an
honorary research position at the University of Adelaide (Head 2).
While Coetzee refuses to comment on the political meaning of his novels, the author
has not remained silent on political manners. Coetzee, for example, took a stance when
discussing the censorship of Salman Rushdie (Harber np.). Moreover, he has publicly delivered
critiques of neoliberal globalization in the two essays central to Chapter two.
In literary studies, today, the author is often considered to be a restraint on the
multiplicity of meanings of a text, or at least only one of many possible organizing principles
in reaching an understanding of a text1. However, an interpretation of Coetzee’s novels in the
Especially the essays “The Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes and “What is an
Author?” by Michel Foucault have a significant influence on literary studies today.
1
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light of the author’s political statements yields a valuable insight into what, to Coetzee, could
and should be the future of the Humanities in a time in which the discipline’s future is
threatened by an increasingly market-oriented university. Both Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello
arguably engage in the discussion on the effects of neoliberal globalization on the Humanities.
As to reach an understanding of both how and why Coetzee positions himself in the
public sphere the way he does and why he chooses the literary form to reflect on the
contemporary state of the Humanities (in both South Africa and the rest of the world), which in
turn yields an understanding of the effects of the literary form on the contemporary debate on
and in the Humanities, a multi-faceted approach is necessary. Moreover, the theoretical
pluralism required to make sense of Coetzee’s novels proves the exceptional quality of the
authors’ work. In the analysis of Coetzee’s novels, there is no use in separating esthetic form
and political content/context. The theoretical position and methodology of this thesis will be
further explained thoroughly in the following section.
Theoretical Position and Method
In this thesis, a combination of two esthetic traditions, deconstruction and Marxism, yields a
fuller understanding of the potential of Coetzee’s work. The chosen methodology is
interdisciplinary regarding both the engagement with theoretical approaches within literary
studies and esthetics and different disciplines within and beyond the Humanities. Besides
literary studies and esthetics, disciplines such as history, human geography, and political
economy play an essential role. In the following paragraphs, both deconstruction and Marxism
will be shortly introduced. Moreover, it will be argued that while the analysis of Chapter three
is the product of theoretical pluralism, the intertwinement of form and context can also be
situated within the thought of Deleuze.
Hoving 6
Deconstruction challenges the idea of truth by arguing that language is fundamentally
unstable and thereby challenges the author as defining authority regarding the meaning of a
text. Because observations of reality can only be communicated through language, these
observations are always flawed. The work of Coetzee critic Attridge draws heavily on this
tradition. In Reading and Responsibility: Deconstruction’s Traces, for example, Attridge
argues for the value of deconstructive thinking in esthetic analyses. Attridge argues that literary
criticism should set aside the political context in which the literary work came into being, and
instead concentrate on the inventiveness and the unpredictability of the event of the literary
form.
Marxism considers an artwork to reflect a political and historical context2. Through the
politics inside a text, political readings seek to address the politics of the world outside the text.
Karl Marx famously states that “philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in
various ways; the point is to change it” (15). If someone wants to achieve certain political ends,
deconstruction, the thought that a political standpoint has no solid foundation is problematic.
The politically activist stance of readings in the marxist tradition seems irreconcilable with
deconstructivist practices. Attridge confirms this mutual exclusivity when he states that placing
literature in the service of politics might be a feature of the neoliberalization of Humanities
faculties since it assumes that literature is something to be utilized by political programs (The
Singularity of Literature 7-13).
As esthetic theorist Simon O’Sullivan states, it can seem as if in the analysis of art,
Marxism, understanding art as representation, and deconstruction, understanding art as being
in a crisis of representation, are mutually exclusive paradigms (125). However, a combination
of attention to both form and context allows for an exploration of both the social structure out
2
This political and historical context is, in a marxist view, determined by economic relations.
Hoving 7
of which works by Coetzee arise and to which they react and the particulars of literary writing
in the creation of alternatives to that social reality.
The combination of theories and the incorporation of knowledge from other disciplines
in is an interdisciplinary project but the theoretical intertwinement which informs the analysis
of Chapter three can also arguably be designated as Deleuzian. Some introductory textbooks to
literary theory introduce Deleuze and Attridge in the same breath because both argue literature
to be an event (Bertens 235). However, a Deleuzian theory of esthetics moves beyond the
dichotomy of art as either sensible form or reflection of the world. If art produces a sensation,
then the principles which allow this sensation are the same as the principles of composition for
works of art, which makes works of art capable of revealing the conditions of sensibility (Smith
and Protevi). Deleuze and Miyoshi are both convinced that art allows for the interpretation of
social relations, “moments of hesitation and resistance” (Miyoshi 261) and “affects that surpass
ordinary affections and perceptions” (Deleuze and Guattari 65). The term affect refers to the
transitional product of an encounter; it is a term through which Deleuze refers to the “additive
processes, forces, powers, and expressions of change” (Parr 11). Following Deleuze, art has the
potential to create affect, or, to create a space with political potential. In a Deleuzian analysis
of art, art can at the same time help us make sense of the world as it is, and, more importantly,
bring something new into existence and thereby help explore possibilities of being (O’Sullivan
130).
Hoving 8
1. The Peculiar Situation of an Author-Figure Inspired by
Deconstruction
This chapter contains readings of interviews with Coetzee in the light of the work of Attridge
and Derrida. Coetzee places himself deliberately in the public domain but also remains silent
regarding the politics of his novels. Tracing the intellectual history which informs Coetzee’s
seemingly paradoxical stance, as expressed in interviews, is important because it illuminates
that Coetzee’s position is carefully orchestrated. Deconstruction fundamentally challenges the
idea of an author but an exploration of this intellectual legacy, however, yields valuable insight
into Coetzee as an author-figure; it should be acknowledged that Coetzee’s silence is necessary
to give space to literature’s performativity, which in turn is essential to the political potential
of literary works.
1.1 Attridge and Derrida: The Singularity of Literature
Attridge states that his thinking is based on post-structural notions of truth, which means that
he does not consider truth to be limited to universal facts (Attridge, The Singularity 14). An
esthetic theory based on a notion of universal facts, which Attridge thus opposes, can, for
example, be found when looking at the work of eighteenth-century philosopher Friedrich
Schiller. Schiller equated esthetic activity to what he called the “play impulse,” and stated that
“man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a
man when he plays” (20). According to Schiller, play provides humans with a synthesis of two
distinct faculties: the imaginative and the rational. Furthermore, in play, the faculties function
without the compulsion of internal or external demands; this opposes play to work, which is a
means to an end (Hein 67). While Attridge would agree with Schiller on esthetic activity
challenging the rigid separation of esthetics and truth, he disagrees with Schiller’s notion of
Hoving 9
purely rational or purely imaginative activity. According to Attridge, truth is not limited to the
rational, and the imagination participates in “the telling of truths” (The Singularity 14).
Attridge argues the defining characteristic of literature to be that it resists being used for
a certain (political) purpose, which he calls an instrumental use of literature. According to
Attridge, literature should be approached with a kind of openness that allows multiple
outcomes, including an outcome that challenges the project the literature should be serving (The
Singularity 8). The form and unpredictability of literature make up what Attridge calls the
singularity of literature. However, singularity is not something which merely exists; it is
something which occurs (Attridge, The Singularity 67). Singularity occurs in the experience of
the reader (Attridge, The Singularity 67). Thus, singularity is not a thing, but an event.
Another important aspect of literary writing, according to Attridge, is the performance
of meaning; when reading literature, words mean, but at the same time, they show what it means
to mean (The Singularity 109). While literature is not a political instrument, it is implicated in
the political because of this performance of meaning. Derrida’s use of the term performativity
refers to that by saying something, something is created. Derrida, for example, argues that a
professor creates something by lecturing (“The Future of the Profession or the University
Without Condition (thanks to the “Humanities,” what could take place tomorrow).” 36)
Following Attridge and Derrida, literature has the power to perform how language does
not merely describe the world, but shapes it. Literary critic Jonathan Culler, therefore,
emphasizes that according to Derrida, literature does not presume a pre-existing reality that
must be represented, but instead crafts its own and performs this instituting of a reality (“Derrida
and” 871, “The Most Interesting Thing in the World” 9). Attridge’s “telling or truths” thus
refers to how art can tell us what could be possible.
Derrida, however, argues that the performativity of fiction even constitutes the real
world: “no democracy without literature, no literature without democracy” (“Passions: An
Hoving 10
Oblique Offering” 23). Therefore, Derrida calls literature “the most interesting thing in the
world” (“This Strange Institution Called Literature” 47). Literature can shape other worlds, and
thereby escape the world, but it is also the condition for the possibility of a world. Moreover,
literature allows an author to say anything, without being responsible for what was said, thus
granting the author the right to non-response (Derrida, “Passions” 23). This right to nonresponse is not mere irresponsibility3, but instead a duty of responsibility to that which is to
come (Derrida, “This Strange Institution” 38). Literature’s political potential thus also lies in
its capacity to be different from that which is by always being involved with that which is not
yet. In the following section, interviews with Coetzee will illuminate that Coetzee’s seemingly
paradoxical stance is the product of the author’s deconstructivist heritage.
1.2 Interviews: Coetzee and the Political Potential of Literature
Arguably, Coetzee, as an author-figure, has appeared most elusive in interviews. In interviews,
Coetzee consciously takes up a stage in the public sphere, only to give opaque answers and
comment on the structure of questions asked. The unusual combination of an intellectual
tradition which has dismissed the author as the central organizing principle in a text with
interviews with Coetzee yields an insight in the author’s seemingly paradoxical ambiguity.
Interviews discussed in this section are: the interview with Poyner in J.M. Coetzee and the Idea
of the Public Intellectual, published in 2009, the interview with Scott in the magazine
Salmagundi, published in 1997, and multiple interviews with Attwell in Doubling the Point,
published in 1992. These interviews were chosen because, firstly, the interview with Poyner
explicitly touches upon the subject of instrumental criticism. Secondly, the interview with
Joanna Scott is significant because during this interview Coetzee reasserts his position to some
Derrida warns that by holding an author completely irresponsible, giving an author the
freedom to say anything, an author’s writing can quickly be neutralized as mere fiction (“This
Strange Institution” 38).
3
Hoving 11
of the terms of “The Novel Today,” a much-cited essay by Coetzee in which he addresses his
view on the relationship between the novel and history (McDonald 59). Thirdly, Coetzee
himself has stated that he probably expresses himself better in Doubling the Point than during
other interviews, for example the interview with Scott (Voice and Trajectory 95).
Coetzee reasserts some of his crucial ideas about the relationship between the novel and
history during the interview with Scott. He defines the relationship as one of “rivalry” (“Voice
and trajectory” 100). On the other hand, when Scott asks whether Coetzee is disappointed about
books no longer being banned in South Africa - which she interprets as books no longer being
taken “seriously,” thus not seen as a dangerous political instrument - Coetzee nuances the notion
of rivalry by addressing the ridiculousness of the “fury of the authorities against writers”
(“Voice and Trajectory” 102). Similar to arguments by Attridge and Derrida, Coetzee argues
that literature is politically effective but certainly not a political instrument, because it crafts its
own reality. The challenge of a novel is not “to describe or represent,” instead, it is “to
construct” (“Voice and Trajectory” 95). Therefore, Coetzee states that “obviously, no one
begins by saying, A) I'm going to write a novel on the following subject, and B) I'm going to
write it the following way. Method is not distinct from subject” (“Voice and Trajectory” 92).
In the interview with Poyner, Coetzee affirms his position when he states that “it’s hard for
fiction to be good fiction while it is in the service of something else” (“J.M. Coetzee in
Conversation” 21).
The academic is addressed in the interview with Poyner when Coetzee states that he
“does not read much academic criticism” (“J.M. Coetzee in Conversation” 22). This disregard
of academic criticism is two-folded. First, Coetzee dislikes instrumental criticism. Coetzee’s
dislike of instrumental criticism is linked to the statement about the resurrection of the term
“public intellectual” perhaps having something to do with “people in the Humanities, more or
less ignored nowadays, trying to carve out a niche for themselves in the body politic” (“J.M.
Hoving 12
Coetzee in Conversation” 23). Coetzee regards instrumental criticism as a symptom of this
carving out of a position in the body politic.
When talking about his interest in mathematics in the interview with Scott, Coetzee
states that for him mathematics is a form of “intellectual play,” which means that he has never
been interested in the way it can be applied (“Voice and trajectory” 83). Continuing this notion
of intellectual play, Coetzee states the following: “play is, to me, one of the defining
characteristics of human beings. I look askance at the word "work." When people talk of work
I ask myself: what is going to be betrayed, sacrificed, in the name of work?” (“Voice and
trajectory” 83). Coetzee, just as Attridge and Derrida, is suspicious of the separation between
intellect and imagination, which makes him suspicious of academic criticism, or, criticism as
work.
In Doubling the Point, Coetzee elaborates on his position of writing not being a preplanned project by adding a dimension to the unpredictability of writing. In the interview in the
chapter “Beckett,” Coetzee does not only state that writing is not something which can be
planned, but also that writing can go beyond or against possible intentions of an author:
Writing reveals to you what you wanted to say in the first place. In fact, sometimes
constructs what you want or wanted to say. ... Writing, then, involves an interplay
between the push into the future that takes you to the blank page in the first place, and a
resistance. (Doubling the Point 18)
What is being written is as much of an event to the author as to a reader. This means that writing
can, besides being illuminating or revealing, go against a writer’s wishes. Writing provides a
resistance while at the same time being a venture into the not-yet-thought. This friction between
a push into the future and resistance is intertwined with the play which Coetzee refers to in the
second paragraph of the “Autobiography and Confession” section:
Hoving 13
The feel of writing fiction is one of freedom, of irresponsibility, or better, of responsibility
toward something that has not yet emerged ... If I were a truly creative critic, I would
work toward liberating that [critical] discourse - making it less monological, for instance.
But the candid truth is I don’t have enough investment in criticism to try. Where I do my
liberating, my playing with possibilities, is in my fiction. (Doubling the Point 246)
Especially in this last statement, but throughout the interviews with Poyner, Scott, and Attwell,
Coetzee’s position on the singularity of literature and the relationship between literature and
politics has much in common with theories by Attridge and Derrida. While Derrida speaks of
the irresponsibility of the author, Coetzee corrects himself and speaks of responsibility, but this
responsibility is to something which is yet unknown. This is the responsibility to the event of
literature, or, literature’s capacity to create, instead of to repeat or represent. Attridge’s proposal
of a new kind of criticism seems to be on par with Coetzee’s remark on being a truly creative
critic; criticism should work towards liberating fiction, instead of fitting it into allencompassing explanations. Literary criticism in the form of play, instead of work, would allow
for the appreciation of literature’s political potential.
It can be concluded that Coetzee thinks critical discourse can be liberated, which means
that he considers academic criticism, regarding its political potential, to be just as fertile as
literary discourse. As Derrida emphasizes, the act of professing is a performative speech act.
To Coetzee, performativity is something which could and should be played with by those
involved in the creation of critical discourse, but academic criticism is considered to be work,
instead of play, which means that it remains relatively4 locked in conventions regarding the
separation between the imaginative and academic writing. During the interview with Attwell,
Coetzee states that he does not have enough investment in criticism to try to liberate it from the
4
Criticism by for example Derrida and Deleuze is an example of singular responses to literary
works.
Hoving 14
distinction between the imaginative and the rational. This statement by Coetzee will be returned
to in Chapter three, where it is argued that some of his literary work can be interpreted as an
attempt to liberate critical discourse. First, however, Chapter two is dedicated to the reason
Coetzee has changed his mind on the importance of this liberation, which can be found in the
historical context of Coetzee’s writing.
Hoving 15
2. Coetzee’s Response to Developments in South African Higher
Education after Apartheid
While an assessment of the intellectual tradition in which Coetzee can be situated yields an
understanding of the way he positions himself, a more materialist study of the historical context
of Coetzee’s work illuminates a possible motivation for Coetzee’s change of mind regarding
the importance of criticism. In this chapter, a conceptual definition of neoliberalism and an
assessment of its utopian premises elucidate the stark contrast between the promises of the
neoliberal doctrine and its material manifestations. Moreover, a discussion of the historical
development of higher education in South Africa will bring to light how international finance
is deeply involved in the financialization of higher education. The conceptual and historical
framework of this chapter leads to an understanding of Coetzee’s critique of neoliberalism, his
uneasiness with contemporary critical practice as expressed in two essays, and to the conclusion
that Coetzee closely relates the Humanities, intellectuals, and literature.
2.1 A Neoliberal Utopia
The term neoliberalism has already appeared in this thesis, but before using the word again, it
requires examination. In the past twenty years, the term neoliberalism has been employed
frequently in academic debates. The list of scholars analyzing neoliberalism is long and
includes both public-oriented academics such as Noam Chomsky and philosophers who are
usually less associated with a critique of neoliberalism, such as Michel Foucault5. However,
geographer David Harvey provides a lucid working definition of neoliberalism:
Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes
that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial
Consider, for example, Profit over People by Chomsky and The Birth of Biopolitics by
Foucault.
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Hoving 16
freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private
property rights, free markets and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve
an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. … Furthermore, if markets do
not exist (in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security, or
environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action if necessary. But
beyond these tasks the state should not venture. (Harvey 2)
Neoliberalism is directly opposed to state interventionist theories, such as those of John
Meynard Keynes, which rose to prominence after the 1930’s in response to the Great
Depression (Harvey 20). During the period from 1945 to 1980, social protection and regulation
were implemented to prevent unlimited capital accumulation by an economic elite (Palley 20).
Internationally, a new world order was constructed to help stabilize international relations
through various institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the IMF (Harvey
10).
The question of how it became possible that neoliberal reforms were implemented from
the 1980’s after this period of relative social policies, is difficult to answer. Some have argued
that internal differences about Keynesian policies are to blame (Palley 21), but others have
convincingly argued that neoliberal policies were implemented by strategic use of moments of
social and economic crisis in the 1970’s associated with the Vietnam War and oil price shocks
(Klein). Either way, Ronald Reagan, in the USA, and Margaret Thatcher in Britain, both
accompanied by the slogan “There Is No Alternative” or TINA, were largely responsible for
the political implementation of these neoliberal measures in the 1970’s. The theoretical
foundations of neoliberalism had been prepared well before that time, by the Mont Pelerin
Society, created by Friedrich von Hayek (Harvey 7).
The theoretical framework of neoliberalism has been described as utopian by multiple
authors (Harvey 19, Achterhuis, De Utopie van de Vrije Markt). While the meaning of the term
Hoving 17
utopia has varied over the ages since its use by Thomas More in 1516, it is considered to be
bound up with both an affirmation of a possibility and a negation of its fulfillment (Viéra 6).
After the Cold War, however, the term utopia became understood as a political blueprint for
society, part of a totalitarian regime as associated with Communism, thereby always
immediately turning into a “utopia gone wrong” (Vieira 15-16). Therefore, Thatcher and
Reagan’s TINA was argued to be built on economic facts. In response, however, Harvey and
others argue that this set of facts served as a displacement of the material truths technocratic
rulers refused to acknowledge and even serves to legitimize the re-installment of an economic
elite (Møller Stahl & Rübner Hansen np., Harvey 19). Arguably, the slogan TINA makes
neoliberalism into what it is supposed to cure: a totalitarian social blueprint. In the following
section, an assessment of the effects of the implementation of neoliberal policies in South Africa
will exemplify the discrepancy between the utopian premises and neocolonial reality of the
neoliberal project.
2.3 Post-Apartheid South Africa
Nowadays, the originally Keynesian IMF nowadays does not only pursue the objectives that
were set out in its initial mandate. Economist Joseph Stiglitz, after tracking the involvement
of the IMF in several developing countries, concludes that the IMF, instead of serving global
economic interests, now serves the interest of global finance (200). Following Stiglitz, the
IMF and the World Bank both function as tools through which neoliberal policies can be
implemented in developing countries. In the case of South Africa, the history of the
involvement the IMF and the World Bank in post-Apartheid South Africa illuminates how the
implementation of neoliberal policies through originally Keynesian institutions works.
Before the democratic election on April 27, 1994, a transitional South African
government was formed, which incorporated both the (Social-Democratic) African National
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Congress and the (Republican) National Party (Bond 45). The very first act of this government
was to accept a $850 million loan from the IMF (Bond 46). Since the 1980’s, the IMF and the
World Bank have linked loans for developing countries to structural adjustment programs
which require loan-receiving governments to restructure their economies to neoliberal
principles, including a focus on export, spending cuts for social programs, sweeping
privatization, and reduced regulation of transnational corporations (Steger and Roy 98). When
they came to power, Mandela’s ANC replaced the program with which they had campaigned,
the more Keynesian Reconstruction and Development Program, with one designed by the
World Bank, called the Growth Employment and Redistribution program (Bond 46). The
effects of this neoliberal turn of South Africa have been beneficial to international corporations,
but detrimental to most the population. While neoliberal policies did increase national economic
prosperity, relative and absolute poverty and job loss increased, while prices of water,
electricity, and healthcare skyrocketed due to the privatization of these services (Bond 47).
The main commodity of neoliberal capitalism is knowledge (Peters 155). Older forms
of capitalism, however, do not disappear in neoliberal capitalism; instead, the knowledge
economy has become prevalent, and immaterial labor is implicated in other systems of
exploitation (Martin-Cabrera 602). In the section below, a discussion of the history of education
in South Africa illustrates the importance of knowledge as a commodity in neoliberal capitalism
and confirms the neocolonial character of the neoliberal project.
2.4 The Political Economy of South African Universities: Colonialism and Neocolonialism
The pre-colonial institutions of South Africa had been the product of local social needs, but the
educational institutes of Africa were disconnected from their historical past when they were, by
force, replaced by European institutions (Woldegiorgis and Doevenspeck 36). In its early stage,
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colonial education was also run by Christian missionaries (Nyamnjoh 4). The objective of
colonial institutes of higher education was not to address the socio-economic problems of
Africa, but rather, to facilitate the smooth running of colonial practices (Woldegiorgis and
Doevenspeck 38).
During Apartheid, which lasted from 1948 to 1994, the South African government relied
heavily on educational institutes to keep racial segregation in place. Educational institutes were
accessible for either white or black students (Fiske and Ladd 219) and in 1951, South Africa
knew only one university available for black students (Akojee and Nkomo 389). The Extension
of University Education Act of 1959 expanded access for black students to white institutions
and more schools were designated for Africans (Akojee and Nkomo 389). These changes
eventually contributed to the end of Apartheid in 1994 because the foundation of the Black
Consciousness movement was laid by black university students such as Steve Biko (Worden
128).
In the 1980’s, the World Bank stated that that the return rate of investment in higher
education in sub-Saharan countries was unsustainable and that these countries would be better
off closing their universities. The World Bank shifted its policy toward financing primary and
secondary education, and many other international donors followed the bank’s example.
African governments were advised to cut public funding for universities, leaving higher
education in Africa deprived of both international and domestic support (Cloete and Maassen
8). Prominent African intellectuals, such as Mahmood Mamdani from Uganda, were not
surprised nor sorry about this deprivation. Mamdani argued that under Apartheid, which he
called a form of indirect rule opposed to direct British colonial rule, the project of “creating a
westernized intelligentsia, clones who would lead the assimilationist enterprise” was (finally)
given up (qtd. in Sanders 12).
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However, in the case of South Africa, it has also been argued that the Humanities played
a central role in bringing an end to Apartheid (Kondlo 8, Vale 26). The emergence of the Black
Consciousness Movement from black student populations seems to confirm this argument,
despite the shortcomings of the university system and the Humanities in South Africa.
Universities had functioned as a space in which people could come together and shape ideas
about the social system they found themselves in, and the Humanities played a role as “sites of
resistance” to the Apartheid system (Kondlo 8).
The end of Apartheid in South Africa led to a discussion on how South African
universities needed to be transformed (Kondlo 9). Academics such as Mamdani argued that
South African universities needed to become more relevant to the South African context by
forming an Africa-focused intelligentsia (Du Toit 103), but the discussion quickly became
dominated by a debate on the economic relevance of universities. In the early 1990’s, the World
Bank changed its statement on higher education in sub-Saharan countries. The bank published
multiple reports reaffirming the role of higher education in a knowledge economy (Cloete and
Maassen 11). The World Bank now not only states that that a more “knowledge-intensive
approach” to development is not only an attractive option for many African countries, but that
it is “possibly the only route that could permit sustained, outward-oriented development” (xxii).
South African Universities acted according to the neoliberal motto TINA. Restructuring
to meet the demands of the market became believed to be the only way South African
universities could contribute to the development of the country. The new market demands of
Africa were practical, rather than theoretical training and a focus on science and technology
rather than the Humanities (Woldegiorgis and Doevenspeck 42). The National Research
Foundation steered the direction of research by establishing so-called Focus Areas, and later
governance steering under the name Program Approach advocated the replacement of a broadbased curriculum to a tightly organized program designed to prepare students for “the real
Hoving 21
world” (Wright 186-187). Besides a practical curriculum, universities in South Africa became
defined by: new managerialism (increased importance and power of managers responsible for
efficiency and effectiveness), advisory faculty boards (faculty boards stripped from substantive
discussion and decision making) and an idea of the academic as suspect (work audits and other
surveillance strategies used to calculate the cost and the benefit of academics) (Baatjes 5-6).
In South Africa, universities no longer facilitate imperial colonial administration or
Apartheid but instead they serve the global economy which makes them, in the words of cultural
theorists Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy, both colonial and neocolonial institutions (5). While
access to higher education has been expanded in post-Apartheid South Africa (Kondlo 13), it
is arguable that this change is due in large part to the needs of the neoliberal knowledge
economy. The indigenous population of South Africa serves this economy best by obtaining a
higher education degree. In the transformation of South African universities, the Humanities
became threatened by budget cuts due to their lack of economic relevance and remained
incapable of incorporating the African voice in the content and orientation of the discipline
(Kondlo 11). In this period, Coetzee publishes the two essays central to the section below.
2.5 Essays: Coetzee’s Response
Coetzee addresses developments in post-Apartheid South African universities since the
1990’s in the essays “Critic and Citizen: A Response,” published in 2000, and “J.M. Coetzee:
Universities Head for Extinction,” published in 2014. Instead of remaining tacit regarding
political matters, Coetzee expresses a clear critique of the effects of neoliberalism on South
African and the nation’s institutes of higher education.
In “Critic and Citizen: A Response,” Coetzee affirms that universities are dominated by
a new form of colonialism, the global spread of neoliberalism, by addressing neoliberalism as
“the new global imperialism” (“Critic and Citizen: A Response” 111). Coetzee states that the
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heart of the university has up to now been “the study of philosophy and the classics” and that
while this concentration might be Eurocentric, the university as we know it is a European
invention (“Critic and Citizen” 110). The traditional model of the university finds itself under
pressure by “an increasingly economistic interrogation of social institutions,” which is a direct
effect of “globalization and the new economic world order” (“Critic and Citizen” 110).
To further define the traditional model which finds itself under pressure, Coetzee sets
out to define the term intellectual. Coetzee argues that the only thing one must refer to when
defining intellectuals is idealism: “because idealism seems to me inherent in the way that
intellectuals conceive of themselves socially” (“Critic and Citizen” 109). This idealism allows
the intellectual to fulfill her or his social function. The social function of the intellectual is that
they relate the present and future of humankind, the only species that has the capability of giving
the past a conceptual shape (“Critic and Citizen” 109). Coetzee argues that ideals allow
intellectuals to confront social realities, not in the sense that they are “confronted with them,”
but to “confront them”, in an “active, David-and-Goliath spirit” (“Critic and Citizen” 110).
With ideals, intellectuals can contribute to social progress, for example by taking up the position
of an academic and analyzing social injustice such as colonization and racialization (“Critic and
Citizen” 110).
Thus, to Coetzee, the intellectual has a social function which is comparable to the
political function of literature. Intellectuals can confront that which is by offering alternative
possibilities with ideals, ideas disconnected from that which is. These alternative possibilities
allow intellectuals to not merely react to the reality they are confronted with, but to confront
that reality with other options and ideas. Multiple critics have noticed that Coetzee’s stance on
the function of the intellectual is comparable to Edward Said’s conception of the public
intellectual, who argued that true intellectuals serve humankind best when they are committed
to universal ideas, and stay detached from the political passions of the moment (Nethersole 46,
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Attwell, “The Life and Times” 38). The relation between Coetzee’s ideas about intellectuals
and his ideas about literature becomes even more evident when considering that both Said and
Coetzee consider another important function of the intellectual to be that they should develop
popular literacy by helping readers to understand performance conventions. The ability to
recognize and use the performativity of language allows citizens “to make and unmake, to
construct and deconstruct” that society (Said, “The Book, Critical Performance, and the Future
of Education” 18-19).
However, in the second part of the “Critic and Citizen” essay, Coetzee states that even
though colonization and racialization are important subjects of analysis for intellectuals who
are academics, they should be paying attention to globalized neoliberalism: “it passes my
comprehension that we as academic intellectuals in Africa and of Africa should want to spend
our time tracking down the residual ghosts of the nineteenth-century British Empire, when it is
clearly more urgent to recognize and confront the new global imperialism” (“Critic and Citizen”
111).
Coetzee emphasizes the utopianism of neoliberalism by stating that the new economic
world order is a constructed reality, and intellectuals should treat it as such (“Critic and Citizen”
110). The new world order is an idea, even though its manifestations are real: “it is ‘real’ only
insofar as it works; why it works no one knows or pretends to know” (“Critic and Citizen” 110).
Coetzee emphasizes this utopianism because if neoliberalism is just an idea, other ideas are
possible, contrary to the TINA slogan. Designating it as an idea rather than an unavoidable
reality makes space for intellectuals to do what they should to, which is to offer readers criticism
which allows these readers to make and unmake the world in which they find themselves.
Coetzee argues that intellectuals in Africa have been concerned with transforming the African
university from a European to an authentically African institution. The focus on the process of
Hoving 24
intellectual colonization, by intellectuals such as Mamdani, distracts from the much greater
process of economic colonization (Coetzee, “Critic and Citizen” 110-111).
In the second essay, written in the form of a letter to South African literary scholar John
Higgins, Coetzee compliments Higgins on his defense of the democratic value of the
Humanities but states that he is afraid that a book such as Higgins’ will not change anything,
for which he gives two reasons. First, Coetzee thinks that Higgins underestimates the
ideological force (neoliberalism) that drives the attack on the independence of universities
(“J.M. Coetzee: Universities Head for Extinction”). Coetzee offers a historical sketch of that
attack: “this assault commenced in the 1980’s as a reaction to what universities were doing in
the 1960’s and 1970’s, namely, encouraging masses of young people in the view that there was
something badly wrong with the way the world was being run and supplying them with the
intellectual fodder for a critique of Western civilization as a whole” (“J.M. Coetzee”). Coetzee
argues that the ideological campaign of neoliberalism was deliberately aimed at ridding the
university of anything leftist, which in turn has made the university politically useless (“J.M.
Coetzee”).
Coetzee’s second reason for pessimism is based on an argument which, again, traces
along his ideas about literature. To argue that the Humanities play a vital role in democracy
inevitably begs the question: “if critical literacy is just a skill or set of skills, why not just teach
the skill itself? Would that not be simpler, and cheaper too?” (“J.M. Coetzee”). The claim that
only the full apparatus of humanistic education can produce critical literacy seems hard to
sustain to Coetzee, and he argues that this discussion inevitably leads to general “Reading and
Writing” courses (“J.M. Coetzee”). Coetzee instead argues that the insistence on the democratic
value of the Humanities degrades the Humanities because it makes the discipline into a
democratic tool. Coetzee affirms this stance when he argues that, while he respects the strategic
defense employed by Higgins, in the end, defenders of the Humanities must make a stand by
Hoving 25
saying “we need free inquiry because freedom of thought is good in itself” (“J.M. Coetzee”).
Freedom of thought has intrinsic value. In the end, every argument that relies on the use or
meaning of the Humanities will fall short, just as any argument on the use or meaning of
literature falls short. Thus, Coetzee closely relates both the Humanities, intellectuals, and
literature; all three are politically effective precisely by not being a political instrument.
Therefore, Coetzee does not attempt to defend the Humanities in his essays. Instead, Coetzee
suggests that to keep humanistic inquiry safe it might be necessary to practice it outside the
institution of the university (“J.M. Coetzee”). In Chapter three, it will be argued that literature
is the place where Coetzee has sought to safeguard humanistic inquiry.
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3. The Novel as Both Creative Critique and Productive Intervention:
Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello
While the international character of neoliberal capitalism has been emphasized in Chapter two,
an international perspective on the internal discussion in the Humanities on how to defend
humanistic practice against neoliberal austerity measures is also required to understand the
possible motivation for Coetzee’s change of mind. Further exploration of a Deleuzian theory of
subjectivization in neoliberal capitalism elucidates another reason why defending of the
Humanities is a complicated task. In this chapter, equal attention is paid to the esthetic qualities
of the literary form and to the historical context of the novels. Regarding the distinctive literary
form, focalization is central to the meaning-making process of both Disgrace and Elizabeth
Costello, but the dialogic structure of the latter adds a significant layer of meaning to the novel.
An analysis of the novels leads to the conclusion that Coetzee’s literary works allow for an
increased commitment to the safeguarding of contemporary critical, humanistic practice.
3.1 An International Discussion: What Crisis in the Humanities?
The discussion on the contemporary state of the Humanities among academics, in which
Coetzee’s essays from Chapter two participate, is not limited to South Africa, or the African
continent. An increased focus on science, technology, and practical training is also found in
universities in Europe and North America. In academia, this has led to rhetoric addressing a
crisis in the Humanities which is said to leave them and even the university in ruins (Readings,
Szeman, Eagleton). However, rhetoric about a crisis in the Humanities can be traced back to
the 1920’s (Jay 2). Philosopher Hannah Arendt, for example, published an article called “The
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Crisis in Education” in 1954, but Arendt does not seem to address a specific crisis6. Arendt
exemplifies a tendency described by literary scholar Paul Jay, where researchers and
administrators addressing a crisis in education, during the twentieth century, mostly addresses
structural issues and not an immediate crisis (2).
A proliferation of rhetoric concerning crisis, not only by scholars and administrators in
universities but also by media and governmental organizations, is intertwined with a change in
the meaning of the term. Whereas it used to refer to a moment of decision or judgment, it now
seems to refer to uncertainties of any given moment (Koselleck and Richter 399). As journalist
Naomi Klein argues, this sense of perpetual crisis can function as a legitimization of neoliberal
policies and planning. South African literary scholar Laurence Wright, for example, observes
that rationalist policies are often the product of mistaken crisis management and “a deeply felt
ideological need for radical change” (189). This crisis management is mistaken because recent
rhetoric regarding a crisis in the Humanities in South Africa is, for example, based on the
assumption that enrollments and publications in the Humanities are declining steadily, while
this assumption has been effectively challenged by pointing out diverse fields in the Humanities
which are flourishing (Mouton 2). Mistaken crisis management and the neoliberal policies it
legitimates, however, do provide a threat to the Humanities.
Some literary scholars, however, state that the threat faced by Humanities does not come
from an external source, but instead from inside the Humanities. Frank Donoghue, André du
Toit, and Attridge for example argue that neoliberal logic has already been internalized by the
Humanities because categories of productivity, efficiency and competitive achievement already
drive professional advancement (The Last Professors xvi, “Critic and Citizen” 100, The
Singularity 8). Political Scientist Wendy Brown even argues that it is a typical irony of
Arendt for example states that “[t]he problem of education in the modern world lies in the
fact that by its very nature it cannot forgo either authority or tradition, and yet must proceed in
a world that is neither structured by authority nor held together by tradition” (13).
6
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neoliberal entrepreneurialism and debt-financed investment that it draws both producers and
investors into niches which are unsustainable (195). In the case of the Humanities, the creation
of inaccessible niches sets academics more and more apart from the classroom and the world,
which in turn degrades their social value, creating a downward spiral (Brown 195).
3.2 Deleuze and Lazzarato: Governing by Debt
Observations by Donoghue, du Toit, and Attridge leave to wonder: how is it possible that this
neoliberal logic made its way into Humanities departments, even though some scholars
oppose(d) it so strongly? Though it is impossible, within the scope of this thesis, to empirically
trace the proliferation of an idea, a Deleuzian theory of debt developed by sociologist and
philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato provides clues toward an answer to the question of how
neoliberal logic becomes incorporated by individuals and institutions7. Deleuze argues that
twenty-first-century capitalism replaced the tangible discipline of the factory by the invisible
control of the corporations (Deleuze 4).
Lazzarato looks at American universities to explain how this new technique of power,
control, works. In the words of Lazzarato, the American university is not only “a temple for the
transmission and production of Western knowledge,” but also a model of “the financial
institution, and, with it, the debt economy” (64). In America, since the neoliberal turn of the
1970’s, social rights amongst which the right to education, have been substituted for the access
to credit, or the right to contract debt: “no more pooling of pensions, instead individual
investment in pension funds; no pay raises, instead consumer credit; no universal insurance,
individual insurance; no right to housing, home loans” (Lazzarato 66). Whereas in the society
of discipline, discipline was exercised in a limited space, debt exercises control in an unlimited
7
Scholars are funded differently than students, but debt as a form of control does not only
affect students; students are merely Lazzarato’s example.
Hoving 29
space and time: the period of repayment for students runs up to thirty years (Lazzarato 69).
Possibilities in twenty-first-century capitalism are defined by debt, because debt influences the
future behavior of the indebted. Moreover, students do not only valorize themselves as human
capital to pay back loans, but they also become the manager of their own business (Lazzarato
70). Neoliberalism turns subjects into their own overseer or manager by indebting them. The
changes in Humanities departments as described by Donoghue, du Toit, and Attridge exemplify
that academics have not proven immune to this process. The administrators of whom Miyoshi
warns might also be a term which refers to students and scholars themselves.
3.3 Defending the Humanities
It turns out that the situation in and of the Humanities is intricate. On the one hand, a perpetual
sense of crisis seems to legitimize neoliberal austerity measures in Humanities departments.
When examined, this notion of crisis turns out to be questionable. On the other hand, it can be
argued that neoliberal logic is not merely forced upon the Humanities, but also internalized by
students and scholars. Moreover, while a notion of crisis can be questioned, austerity measures
do provide an actual threat to the institutional safeguarding of the Humanities. In reaction to
this threat, the term crisis is invoked again, by scholars themselves, to defend the Humanities.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, for example, argues that “we are in the midst of a crisis of
massive proportions and grave global significance” (2). Nussbaum’s argument is similar to
Higgins’ defense of the Humanities. Nussbaum argues that the Humanities should not serve the
market but should instead serve democracy. According to Nussbaum, the Humanities are
essential for democracy because they educate critical citizens capable of dissecting their own
and other’s arguments in the Socratic tradition. Nussbaum adds that this capability of
understanding an argument by others, but also the sympathetic imagination which engagement
Hoving 30
with the arts fosters, enables students to have sympathy with, or even identify with, those who
would otherwise be considered as other.
While interviews with and essays by Coetzee show that Coetzee is very much involved
in the discussion on the current situation in the Humanities, he has not, as Nussbaum and
Higgins have, produced a defense of the Humanities. As argued in Chapter two, Coetzee
considers arguments based on the use of the Humanities to deprive them of their intrinsic value.
Moreover, Nussbaum’s case for the Humanities as being subservient to existing democratic
structures is reactionary, while Coetzee ascribes them a different role. Coetzee considers the
value of the Humanities to be their capability to create possibilities (and to stimulate others to
make their own), instead of merely reacting to the world as it is. The section on Disgrace and
Elizabeth Costello contains an elaboration on this creative potential.
3.4 Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello
In the following analysis, Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello will be interpreted with attention to
both the historical context sketched in Chapter two and literary form. The analysis of Disgrace
concentrates on processes of subjectivization and dissent in neoliberal capitalism because this
contributes to an understanding of the critique articulated in the novel. The formal analysis of
both works shows that focalization is central to their meaning-making process. The dialogic
structure of Elizabeth Costello, however, adds a significant layer of meaning to the novel, which
will be central to the conclusion of this thesis.
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3.5 Disgrace
Disgrace, published in 1999, provided the start of Coetzee’s popular and critical acclaim. Few
novels in the surrounding decades received as much debate and media attention (Attridge, “J.M.
Coetzee’s Disgrace: An Introduction” 315). Therefore, the narrative has been subject to a
plethora different interpretations. While critics seem to agree on the novel’s intricate
engagement with post-Apartheid South Africa, the enormous variety in the reception of
Disgrace seems to support Rosemarie Buikema’s stipulation of the novel as “a search, not so
much for the right answers as for a state of susceptibility to the right questions” (309).
The plot of the story revolves around protagonist David Lurie, an English professor in
his 50’s who teaches at the Cape Technical University. David’s position as a teacher is
endangered when he has an affair with one of his students, Melanie Isaacs. When David refuses
to apologize before a disciplinary committee, he is asked to resign. David then travels to his
daughter, Lucy, who lives on a smallholding in the Eastern Cape. David tries to work on an
opera, helps Lucy, and assists at an animal refuge. When three black men break into Lucy’s
house, rape her, kill her dogs, and injure David, neighbor Petrus seems to be affiliated with the
crime. No formal charges are laid, however, because of Lucy’s refusal to do so. David makes a
quick return to Cape Town, but the novel ends with him back in the Eastern Cape. While Lucy
is made pregnant by one of her rapists, David works on an opera and devotes himself to the
dogs in the animal shelter.
Some state that Disgrace makes clear that Coetzee thinks that the neoliberal agenda for
higher education in South Africa has triumphed (Wright 192). The novel is argued to offer a
pessimistic, fictionalized parody of the university (Carli Coetzee 202). Moreover, the novel
depicts the consequences of this triumph; Humanities research, “the product of card-carrying
academics furthering their careers, remains largely immured in the research journals, making
little observable impact on the public good” (Wright 192). However, others argue that David’s
Hoving 32
so-called failure as a teacher and the refashioned Cape Technical University are the secular
equivalent of the failure of the European civilizing mission in Africa (Cornwell, “Disgraceland:
History and the Humanities in Frontier Country” 56). In this sense, the novel is not a
straightforward critique of the cuckolding of the Humanities but instead also a critique of the
relevance of the Western Romantic heritage in contemporary South Africa (Cornwell,
“Disgraceland” 56). In the following paragraphs, it will be argued that, regarding the
Humanities in South Africa, Disgrace indeed embodies a search for the right questions by
examining both the neoliberal university and the historical position and relevance of the
Humanities in South Africa. However, the narrative does not only address the neoliberal
university but also the internalization of neoliberal logic and different notions of crisis.
Additionally, the narrative does not only raise questions but also gives a sense of hope regarding
the possibilities of humanistic inquiry and the Humanities in Africa.
3.5.1 The Neoliberal University
Early in the narrative, David is described mostly by means of his profession: “by profession he
is, or has been, a scholar, and scholarship still engages, intermittently, the core of him”
(Disgrace 8). David is introduced by means of his job because this job determines his
psychological bandwidth: “he lives within his income, within his temperament, within his
emotional means” (Disgrace 8). The university in which David works is introduced as “the
Cape Technical University, formerly Cape Town University College” (Disgrace 9). The
university probably used to be a liberal arts institute, an institute where both the Humanities,
Arts, and Sciences are offered. David used to be a professor of modern languages, but the
“languages were closed down as part of the great rationalization” (Disgrace 9). David can teach
little specialized courses: “like all rationalized personnel, he can offer one special-field course
a year, irrespective of enrolment, because that is good for morale. This year he is offering a
Hoving 33
course in the Romantic poets” (Disgrace 9). Besides the one special-field course, he is required
to teach communication classes, which he loathes: “for the rest he teaches Communications
101, ‘Communication Skills,’ and Communications 201, ‘Advanced Communication Skills’”
(Disgrace 9). David argues that because he has no respect for the material he teaches, he “makes
no impression on his students” (Disgrace 10).
David, however, has no respect for his students either: “he has long ceased to be
surprised at the range of ignorance of his students” (Disgrace 35). David has no respect for
either the students he teaches, or the material he is supposed to teach; he only continues to teach
because it earns him a living and teaches him humility (Disgrace 10). However, much later in
the novel when David is no longer employed with the university, he admits that he has never
been much of a teacher. He states that he was only a teacher “of the most incidental kind”:
Teaching was never a vocation for me. … I was what used to be called a scholar. I wrote
books about dead people. That was where my heart was. I taught only to make a living.
(Disgrace 156)
It turns out that it is not the material or the students which makes David detest teaching. David
loves to write books, to do research, and only teaches because he must do so in order to make
a living. David’s distance from the classroom is evident but his distance from the world
becomes apparent when he states that “in the course of his career stretching back a quarter of a
century he has published three books, none of which has caused a stir or even a ripple”
(Disgrace 9). He, moreover, describes himself as being “out of touch, out of date” (Disgrace
18). David’s attempts at writing are not very productive either: “but all his sallies at writing it
have bogged down in tedium. The truth is, he is tired of criticism, tired of prose measured by
the yard” (Disgrace 10). David is exactly the kind of faculty member that has retreated further
and further into fields remote from both the world and the undergraduate classroom. David
finds himself in an impasse because he is at the same time frustrated by the lack of connection
Hoving 34
his work to the world, and incapable of seeing a way out of the position in which he finds
himself.
3.5.2 Crisis and Dissent
The beginning of the end of David’s impasse is signaled when David’s former relationship with
Melanie becomes public. David is charged with a sexual offense and is forced to appear in front
of a jury comprised of his colleagues. One of these colleagues, Mathanabe, states that “the body
here gathered … has no powers. All it can do is to make recommendations” (Disgrace 48). The
commission has often been interpreted as a representation of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (Kannemeyer 505). However, the commission also resembles advisory faculty
boards in neoliberal universities, as they are stripped from substantive involvement in decision
making (Baatjes 5-6). David pleads guilty to all charges but refuses to give in to the committee’s
request about him expressing remorse. When trying to convince him to do so, David’s colleague
Swarts states that David stands to lose his job, and “that’s no joke in these days” (Disgrace 52),
referring to austerity measures in Humanities departments which diminish employment
opportunities. David does not give in to the threat and he is fired.
Literary scholar Patrick Lenta, in a Foucauldian analysis, argues that David’s sexual
harassment of Melanie and his refusal to show remorse is a strategy of resistance to the
disciplinary methods of the university (np.). While the idea of the academic as a suspect, which
is enforced by work audits and surveillance strategies which calculate the cost and benefit of
academics, is part of a neoliberal university (Baatjes 5-6), Disgrace does not only portray the
imposition of neoliberal logic but also its internalization through debt. While David resists the
disciplinary methods of the university, it is only at the end of the novel that he stops being the
manager of his own business.
Hoving 35
When David returns to Cape Town for the last time in the novel, he is without a means
of income and lives on credit: “his finances are in chaos. He has not paid a bill since he left. He
is living on credit; any day now his credit is going to dry up” (Disgrace 180). David wonders
if he is left without hope: “the life of a superannuated scholar, without hope, without prospect:
is that what he is prepared to settle for?” (Disgrace 180). When David goes shopping, the
difference in income between him and someone who is still employed is painfully obvious when
he runs into the head of his former department, Elaine Winter: “shopping at the supermarket,
he finds himself in a queue behind Elaine Winter, chair of his onetime department. She has a
whole trolleyful of purchases, he a mere handbasket” (Disgrace 184). At first sight, it seems as
if David is worse off than when he was still employed: “[h]ow is the department getting on
without me,” David asks. Before Elaine answers, David makes up an answer in his mind: “very
well indeed – that would be the frankest answer. We are getting on very well without you”
(Disgrace 184). Elaine replies with “oh, struggling along as usual,” and this reaction is
described as “vaguely” by David (Disgrace 184). The question is, however, is Elaine being
vague?
When David asks “have you been able to do any hiring,” Elaine answers that they “have
taken on one new person, on a contract basis” (Disgrace 184). The new person, a young man,
specializing in applied language studies, is hired only on a temporary contract basis despite his
specialization in communication. The young scholar has adapted to the needs of the global
economy and still only has a temporary contract. The position of the young academic
emphasizes that the department is indeed struggling along as usual and that Elaine is not merely
saying this out of politeness. Moreover, David is not the only person living on credit. Elaine
also pays by credit card (Disgrace 185). At the Cape Technical University, a situation of
perpetual crisis and the internalization of neoliberal logic by debt arguably makes scholars
voluntarily specialize in areas which suit the needs of the current political and economic
Hoving 36
climate. However, David keeps believing that Elaine is only going through the motions, and
does not answer him honestly: “there is still room for Elaine to ask the question, which should
be, And how are you getting on, David?, and for him to respond, Very Well, Elaine, very well.”
(Disgrace 184).
While it remains unclear whether David is aware of both crises, the difference between
David’s crisis and the crisis at the Cape Technical University is that the former is productive.
David had been incapable of writing for a long time; while he was tired of writing as work, and
instead desired to write as play, he remained incapable of thinking of himself as anything but a
business. David lived within his income, which influenced his “temperament” and “emotional
means” (Disgrace 8). When Staying at Lucy, for example, David refers to the woman he has
an affair with, Bev Shaw, in monetary rather than emotional terms: “and let him stop calling
Bev Shaw. If she is poor, he is bankrupt” (Disgrace 144). However, this sentence also hints at
the reason why David’s situation of disgrace is productive; this can be explained by looking at
the work of literary scholar Isabel Morska.
In the novels examined by Morska, she finds that economic terms seem to be the primary
cause for action (11-12). Especially debt, both as a theme and narrative tool, compels literary
characters to act subversively (Morska 33). In Disgrace, debt is certainly a tool for social
manipulation, but because David’s credit has dried up, because he is bankrupt, he is freed from
the constraints of credit and debt. Whereas Morska argues that debt compels characters to
subversive actions, David’s bankruptcy (the incapability to pay his debt) does the same. Instead
of doing traditional research on Lord Byron and his mistress Teresa, David discards of his
internal manager, and finally decides to write an opera: “does he need to go on reading? What
more does he need to know of how Byron and his acquaintance passed their time in old
Ravenna? Can he not, by now, invent a Byron who is true to Byron, and a Teresa too?”
(Disgrace 117-118).
Hoving 37
When David tells his ex-wife Rosalind about this new project, she is exhilarated: “an
opera! Well, that’s a new departure. I hope it makes you lots of money” (Disgrace 179). David
states that the opera will not make him lots of money because his opera is a form of play, instead
of work: “The opera is just a hobby, something to dabble at. It won’t make money” (Disgrace
179). Rosalind is convinced that David is throwing his life away, and afraid that he will end up
as an outcast, a bum: “you are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in
rubbish bins” (Disgrace 180). However, David’s situation of disgrace has already made him an
outcast: “I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground, he says. And so are you. So are we all”
(Disgrace 180). David’s release from the constraints of credit and debt have not left him
“without hope, without prospect” (Disgrace 180); instead, it has given him the hope he needed
to start anew. However, David is not merely a dissenter, escaping the power of the corporate
university. David’s ambiguous characteristics will be addressed in the following section.
3.5.3 The Humanities in South Africa
David’s ambiguousness is intertwined with the fact that the term disgrace does not only refer
to David’s personal situation, but also to the implication of the university and the Humanities
in the disgraceful situation of post-Apartheid South Africa. This ambiguity is mostly achieved
by using a third-person narrator that keeps focalization limited to David. The term focalization
addresses the difference between perspective and seeing. Perspective refers to a position, which
is in this case the position of a third-person narrator, but seeing, focalization, is colored by
thoughts, opinion, and judgment. Mieke Bal’s term focalization refers to the relation between
vision and that which is seen, or, perceived (Bal 142).
In the conversation between David and Elaine, David focalizes when Elaine’s answer is
described as vague; in the paragraph, David’s judgments determine the description of events.
David, for example, describes raping Melanie as “not rape, not quite that, but undesired
Hoving 38
nevertheless, undesired to the core” (Disgrace 30). David’s abuse of power, when he has
nonconsensual sex with a female student (who is referred to as “the dark one” (Disgrace 38) by
David), is never called rape in the narrative. Therefore, feminist readings of the novel
concentrate on this rape scene when addressing the novel’s depiction of (white) male
institutional power in post-Apartheid South Africa (Graham 434, Boehmer 346). However,
when Lucy is raped, David does use the term. Because David is the only focalizer in the novel,
a reader is confronted with David’s bias toward the black population of South Africa. While
David commits the same crime as the three black men, focalization through David ensures that
only the crime perpetrated by the black men is called rape (111, 164, 165). Because David is
an unreliable narrator, a reader is asked to question his dominant interpretation of events.
Moreover, a reader is invited to examine the Europe-centered colonial knowledge systems
which have been imposed on South Africa.
Literary theorist and feminist critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, however, does not
consider David to be an unreliable narrator. Spivak argues that focalization through David is
the “vehicle of the sympathetic portrayal of David” (22). To Spivak, this sympathetic portrayal
is the narrative’s rhetorical signal to counter focalize. By denying Melanie and Lucy
focalization, the story asks the reader to actively construct an alternative narrative as
commentary (Spivak 22). When Lucy refuses to explain her actions to David, by merely
answering “Yes, like a dog”, a critical reader can provide the explanation which the race-gender
illiterate David is unable to deliver (Spivak 22-23). Counter-focalization indeed allows for the
construction of alternative narratives within the narrative. After being raped, Melanie drops out
of the Cape Technical University. Her parents seek contact with David: “she wants to give up
her studies and get a job. It seems such a waste, to spend three years at university and do so
well, and then drop out before the end” (Disgrace 41). A reader is given Melanie’s words
through a series of other people; her parents and David. However, it can be discerned that
Hoving 39
Melanie makes use of a conventional narrative; a job is more important than a humanistic
education. Melanie is very aware that this argument, in the current political climate, sounds
reasonable. Melanie’s parents don’t question her argument, and only later will they find out her
true motive for dropping out. What Melanie might not able to say is that she is dropping out
because she has lost faith in the idea of a university as a place where male, white power can be
challenged.
While also being denied focalization, Lucy challenges David more directly. When
David lives with Lucy, he is determined to situate his daughter in an ongoing frontier history.
He calls her “a frontier farmer of the new breed” (Disgrace 67). Literary scholar Gareth
Cornwell, therefore, places David’s encounter with Lucy’s rural life in the tradition of
Coetzee’s plaasroman (“Disgraceland” 78). The program of the plaasroman is supposed to fly
in the face of “the historical triumph of agricultural capitalism by imagining renewal of the
peasant order based on the myth of the return to the earth” (Cornwell, “Disgraceland” 49).
Following Cornwell, Lucy repudiates David’s, and thus the academic’s, complicity in
capitalistic, colonial and patriarchal systems of exploitation by telling him to stop using the
word farm: “stop calling it a farm, David. This is not a farm, it’s just a piece of land where I
grow things – we both know that” (49). Cornwell is counter-focalizing; Lucy never explicitly
explains why David should stop calling it a farm. Lucy however does continuously emphasize
that David does not understand what she says by stating that he misreads her (Disgrace 109).
At the same time, Lucy draws attention to the other form of debt South Africa and its
universities are facing. Lucy explains that the three black men who raped her see themselves as
“debt collectors, tax collectors,” “why should I be allowed to live here without paying?”
(Disgrace 163). While David might be released from his credit and debt, South African
Universities are not relieved from, in Cornwell’s words, “the guilt of implication” and the
“ongoing, unacknowledged hegemony of “whiteness” and patriarchy in South African
Hoving 40
university English departments” (“Disgraceland” 1). The debt which Lucy addresses, though
not only being a monetary debt, is the kind of debt Morska refers to as allowing for “blending
and speedy traversing of distances” (33) because it compels Lucy to live a different life than
her father’s.
While David remains incapable of understanding his daughter, Lucy’s remarks do make
him frustrated with his usual explanation of the world. Moreover, during his stay with Lucy,
David does seem to become more critical of the separation between the Humanities and the
South African context. Whereas David was already aware of himself being disconnected from
the social world, he now realizes that his Western-European oriented knowledge has little use
in the reality of South Africa: “he speaks Italian, he speaks French, but Italian and French will
not save him here in the darkest Africa” (Disgrace 92). Moreover, David’s attitude regarding
non-human beings changes dramatically during his stay with Lucy, which is part of the reason
why the novel is one of the foundational works in the field of animal studies. In a famous
sentence, David expresses that he has learned to engage with non-human beings emphatically
and that he is capable of “giving it what he no longer has difficulty in calling it by its proper
name: love” (Disgrace 224). David’s change in attitude to non-human beings is often argued to
symbolize a change away from the speciesism which has defined the tradition of western
philosophy; to know the wholly Other, the animal, sympathetically, a corporeal instead of a
rational response to the individual other being is required (Northover, J.M. Coetzee and Animal
Rights: Elizabeth Costello’s Challenge to Philosophy 4, Marais 2). That David manages to
respond to animals, leaves the hope that he might also be able to answer to other-others, or at
least make improvement regarding his race-gender-animal illiteracy.
In Disgrace, an unreliable narrator and counter-focalization are not mutually exclusive.
Both narrative techniques add layers of meaning to the story. Attentiveness to different issues
of focalization in the novel leads to the conclusion that David’s race-gender illiteracy illustrates
Hoving 41
the continuous European orientation of curriculum and research in African universities and
thereby the separation of the Humanities from the South African context, the neocolonial
character of the contemporary university and its lingering issues of race-gender blindness. The
term disgrace does not only refer to David’s individual situation, or the situation at modern
universities, or to the disgraceful situation of continuing racist and sexist attitudes in postApartheid South Africa, but also to the complicity of the university and the Humanities in this
disgraceful situation.
3.5.4 Disgrace: Hope
It can be concluded that Disgrace reveals a multifaceted image of the contemporary university
in South Africa. The academy is portrayed as being held captive by current colonial practices
in the guise of neoliberal policies, but also as an institute which remains separated from the
African reality, and moreover, an institute which is struggling with the remnants of its colonial
history. However, while the novel seems to contribute to complicating the situation even more,
rather than presenting the reader with a straightforward defense of the use of the Humanities,
the book does give rise to a sense of hope. Firstly, that David might be able to respond to otherothers hints toward the possibility of the incorporation of those other-others into the curriculum
of and research in the Humanities. This process might have started with the development of
disciplines such as postcolonial, gender and animal studies, and, in the case of South Africa,
the call for the Africanization of curriculum and research. Secondly, it is a hopeful development
that David starts writing his opera. This opera is a continuation of David’s research because it
allows him to engage with what he considers to be the origin of speech, song. Instead of
instrumental criticism, David’s research takes the form of play. Disgrace also exemplifies that,
as Coetzee argued, the intellectual does not have to be part of a university. Following Coetzee,
humanistic inquiry practiced outside the Humanities and the university, as David does, might
Hoving 42
be a fruitful alternative for those who are frustrated by an increase of instrumentalism in
humanistic research. Thirdly, David’s act, to start writing his opera, is an act based on hope,
this hope returns in Elizabeth Costello.
3.6 Elizabeth Costello
Elizabeth Costello was published in 2003. Parts of the book had been published earlier, such as
the chapter “The Humanities in Africa”. The chapters “The Lives of Animals” had both been
part of the Tanner Lectures, delivered by Coetzee at Princeton University in 1997. The
incorporation of these lectures into Elizabeth Costello, as “lecture-cum-fable,” caused critics
such as Patrick Flanery to wonder:
Is it non-fiction or fiction? It’s re-appearance, as two chapters or ‘Lessons’ in Elizabeth
Costello – a novel whose very novelty has been questioned, and whose arguable status as
Coetzee’s ninth novel is by no means clear – adds to another element to the seeming
confusion. Does this ‘recycling’ signal a failure of imagination? (61)
Flanery’s notion of performance regarding the lectures suits the narrative well because its
structure turns readers into spectators of lectures delivered by Elizabeth. The story is told by a
third-person narrator which makes its presence often known, for example by stating that “we
skip” certain scenes (Elizabeth Costello 6, 18, 19, 20, 25, 27). Focalization, however, shifts; it
is either external, through Elizabeth, or through her son, John. When Elizabeth speaks, the
focalizer is either external or John. As literary scholar Kjetil Elvestad Albertsen argues, shifts
of focalization in the narrative make readers into spectators of a performance (31). Flanery,
however, wonders if the unusual structure of Elizabeth Costello is a possible failure of
imagination; he considers narrative inconsistencies in the life of John possible evidence of
sloppy re-writing (77).
Hoving 43
Contrary to Flanery’s position, others believe the unusual structure of Elizabeth Costello
to be the product of careful examination and even a challenge the norms of academic criticism
by delivering a lecture within fiction (Varsamopoulou np., Attridge, JM Coetzee and the Ethics
of Reading 192-193). To understand how Coetzee tests the norms of the academic debate, how
he challenges academe and the institution of the author, it is important to note that Elizabeth
Costello is not merely a “lecture-cum-fable,” but, in the words of literary scholar Michael Bell,
a “lecture/story/dialogue” (234). Why this dialogue is important is explained by another literary
scholar, Richard Northover, who mainly discusses the two chapters “The Lives of Animals”.
Northover argues that Coetzee’s technique is Socratic, which means that it is opposed to
authoritarianism and moral certainty, and instead seeks truth through dialogue (“Elizabeth
Costello as a Socratic Figure” 41). As stated before, Elizabeth Costello consists not merely of
dialogue but is a combination of dialogue, lecture, and story. Northover argues that Coetzee
with this combination replaces the traditional argumentative or discursive format of a lecture
and instead asserts the power of fiction as a vehicle of ethical concerns (“Elizabeth Costello as
a Socratic Figure” 41). Northover therefore not only draws from Plato, the author of Socrates’
dialogues, but also from literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin: “the dialogic means of seeking truth
is counterposed to official monologism, which pretends to possess a ready-made truth” (qtd. in
Northover, “Elizabeth Costello as a Socratic Figure” 45). However, when going back to Plato’s
Socratic dialogues, it turns out that Coetzee does not merely replace the traditional academic
format, as Northover argues. Coetzee questions the norms of scholarly debate because he
questions the difference between academic prose and fiction.
Various other authors have argued that the dialogue in Elizabeth Costello shows how
philosophical points of view are not merely abstract positions but that they are embodied, and
that it allows for multiple and conflicting perspectives to be expressed (Varsamopoulou np.,
Lynn 130). The embodied nature of philosophical positions runs counter to Platonic philosophy,
Hoving 44
which identifies with pure rationality, as opposed to rhetoric and poetry, which is argued not to
be based rational argumentation, but instead on emotions and aim for persuasion (Skilleas 105106). A Platonic way to look at academic discourse is to consider language a vehicle through
which a philosophical message, or truth, is communicated; this is called the neutralist model
(Skilleas 107). However, a text must use narrative techniques. According to the interactionist
model an author, by choosing a style or form in putting forward an argument, also determines
content (Skilleas 108). For example, the narrator of Plato’s “The Death of Socrates” focalizes
through an “us” or “we,” a larger group of people, thereby manipulating the reader to believe
that focalization is objective.
Coetzee should be placed in the interactionist rather than the neutralist model. Literary
scholar Peter McDonald explains Coetzee’s interactionist stance toward literature and
philosophy very well when stating that many of Coetzee’s critics have more in common with
Apartheid censors in South Africa than they would like to admit, because “… both assumed
that “form” and “content” are in principle separable” (296). Literature performs a dialogue
through characters and without an author to tell a reader which character is right it insists on its
irreducible plurality (Skilleas 23).
Just as Plato considers language a tool, the Humanities in a Platonic sense are a tool
through which leadership positions ought to be filled. Socrates, however, sees the Humanities
as a democratic exercise for all of society (Wright 190), and so does Coetzee. In Elizabeth
Costello, therefore, the academy and the institution of the author are challenged in two ways:
by offering embodied philosophical viewpoints and by providing a plurality of positions instead
of making one argument. To explore how Elizabeth Costello offers a plurality of embodied
views regarding the situation of the Humanities in South Africa and how the narrative questions
the norms of the academic debate, the chapter “The Humanities in Africa” is examined in the
following sections.
Hoving 45
3.6.1 “The Humanities in Africa”
The story “The Humanities in Africa” was published in four distinct forms between 2001 and
2003 (Schillingsburg, “Publications of Coetzee’s ‘The Humanities in Africa’” 105). The story
is about Elizabeth Costello and her sister, Sister Bridget (formerly Blanche) Costello. Bridget
is a Catholic Nun who does missionary work. The sisters are brought together because Bridget
is invited to deliver a graduation address and receive an honorary degree from a South African
university. In this graduation address Bridget condemns the Humanities. In response to Bridget,
Elizabeth and professors of the South African university offer counter arguments to Bridget’s
position. The sisters carry on discussing the Humanities, up to Section 8, and 9 of the novel.
Bridget gets the last word in Section 8, and Elizabeth in Section 9.
In 2004, literary scholar Peter Schillingsburg argues that in earlier versions of “The
Humanities in Africa,” in which Section 9 misses, Bridget wins the discussions (“Publications”
111). According to Schillingsburg, Elizabeth triumphs in the new version of the story because
she embodies Coetzee’s position; the arguments by the professors are denigrated by describing
a prominent professor as “young man” and Elizabeth’s counter arguments are articulated
forcefully in the later added Section 9 (“Publications” 111). In 2006, however, Schillingsburg
changes his mind and argues that the character Elizabeth makes Coetzee’s position more
complex and nuanced and that the author gives his reader great freedom and responsibility to
engage in the discussion (“Textual Criticism, the Humanities and J.M. Coetzee” 13).
Schillingsburg, however, was right in 2004, although the situation is more complicated
than he argued it to be. When merely looking at the content of the narrative, it indeed leaves it
to the reader to decide how to judge. All participants in the discussion on the Humanities offer
strong arguments, and a reader is indeed invited to participate in the debate. Moreover, for those
interested in identifying Coetzee’s position in the discussion, all three positions offered in the
narrative in some way overlap with statements by Coetzee. The version of Humanism which
Hoving 46
Elizabeth argues for, however, triumphs. It triumphs in the combination of form and content of
the narrative because the Humanism proposed by Elizabeth determines the form (and thereby
the meaning) of the story. The meaning of the narrative is inseparable from its form because
Elizabeth Costello, as lecture/story/dialogue, is an attempt in the fashion of the kind of
Humanism proposed by Elizabeth. To reach an understanding of this effort, the positions of
Bridget, the academics of the South African university, and Elizabeth in “The Humanities of
Africa” will be examined in the sections below.
3.6.2 Bridget
Bridget, while trained as a scholar, traded that life for a position as medical missionary. She
wrote a book about her experiences which caught the attention of the academy: “[s]o, having
given up an academic career for a life of obscure toil, Bridget is suddenly famous, famous
enough, now, to be having an honorary degree conferred on her by a university in her adopted
country” (Elizabeth Costello 107). Ironically, Bridget’s distance from the academy is what
yielded her an honorary degree. In her acceptance speech, Bridget immediately announces her
critique of the Humanities. What Bridget explicitly refers to as an “embattled situation” is the
subject of her speech (Elizabeth Costello 110). Bridget implicitly refers to one aspect of this
embattled situation when she states that the historical narrative that she offers would contain
more step-by-step reasoning and historical evidence if she were given more time, but that she
was forced to confine herself:
Since I do not have all morning (your Dean asked me to limit myself to fifteen minutes
at the utmost – “at the utmost” are his own words), I will say what I want to say without
the step-by-step reasoning and the historical evidence to which you, as a gathering of
students and scholars, are entitled. (Elizabeth Costello 110)
Hoving 47
Bridget brings attention to the irony of a situation where she wants to deliver a rational argument
but is unable to do so because she is forced by the Dean of a university, the place for
institutionalized step-by-step reasoning, forced her to be fast. That the Dean explicitly limits
Bridget hints at the incorporation of neoliberal logic into the South African university at which
Bridget receives her degree. Bridget argues that the Dean forced her into “saying what she
wants to say” without conforming to academic conventions (Elizabeth Costello 110). The
implicit embattled situation of the Humanities refers to the neoliberal logic which has been
incorporated by universities and which leaves no room for humanistic inquiry, thereby forcing
some, such as Coetzee, to create alternatives to existing critical practice. As in Disgrace, a
disgraceful situation, or a situation of crisis, can be productive by forcing a character to decide
or judge.
Bridget explicitly emphasizes that the discovery of foreign texts during the Renaissance
was a huge catalyst for the Humanities because it provided with an incredibly rich array of texts
to be studied and translated. However, this studying did not only have a linguistic justification.
Bridget argues that the study of biblical and classical texts was philosophically justified by the
conviction that it would allow scholars to grasp the meaning of redemption. Jesus was sent to
earth to redeem humankind and the only records left of the time before Jesus are those from
antiquity. The Humanities thus became a discipline in which both biblical scholarship and
studies in Greek and Roman antiquity “became coupled in a relationship never without
antagonism” (Elizabeth Costello 112). Bridget blurs the distinction between the secular
Humanities and religious faith because both search for redemption. However, according to
Bridget, the Humanities have lost their way: “the studia humanitatis have taken a long time to
die, but now, at the end of the second millennium of our era, they are truly on their deathbed”
because they have been unable to find the “redemptive word” (Elizabeth Costello 113).
Hoving 48
As Katherine Hallemeier argues, Bridget’s position is a critique of philosophers such as
Martha Nussbaum, who “have envisioned a range or roles for the Humanities fostering more
ethical relationships” in the “new multicultural world” because Bridget suggests that the
Humanities are estranged from the daily suffering they are supposed to mitigate (43). Bridget
argues that while Europeans tried to convince Africans to succumb to the secular Humanities,
Africans chose Christianity because religion is a way to live with suffering rather than an
attempt to ending it (Elizabeth Costello 129). However, Bridget also argues that here has been
a secular alternative to religion: Hellenism (Elizabeth Costello 121). Hellenism, “free minds in
free bodies” (Elizabeth Costello 113) has been, to Bridget, the only embodied alternative to the
abstract and estranged Humanities. This alternative will come back in Section 3.6.4.
3.6.3 Academia
Professor Godwin, in response to Bridget’s speech, argues that “this is a secular age” and that
“[y]ou cannot turn back the clock. You cannot condemn an institution for moving with the
times” (Elizabeth Costello 115). The word institution refers to the university but more
“specifically faculties of universities, which remain the core of any university” (Elizabeth
Costello 115). Professor Godwin’s remark implicitly refers to the incorporation of neoliberal
logic into the Humanities. In response to critics such as Du Toit, Donoghue, and Attridge,
Godwin replies that merely condemning an institution is not productive. However, in Godwin’s
explicit response to Bridget, he defends the Humanities based on the attempt to find redemption:
‘The proper study of mankind is man,’ says Professor Godwin, ‘And the nature of
mankind is a fallen nature. Even your sister would agree with that. But that should not
prevent us from trying – trying to improve. Your sister wants us to give up on man and
go back to God.’ (Elizabeth Costello 115)
Hoving 49
Then, a young man, seated next to Mrs. Godwin, speaks. It can be assumed that he is an
academic or at least someone who believes in the academic Humanities since, in earlier versions
of the story, he is described as one. The young man argues that, contrary to Bridget’s beliefs,
Humanism did and still does stand for the study of what reborn man can be. Referring to early
humanists such as Lorenzo Valla, who were Catholic Christians, he argues that these humanists
were merely trying to improve the New Testament: “if the Church had accepted the principle
that Jerome’s Vulgate was a human production, and therefore capable of being improved, rather
than being the word of God itself, perhaps the whole history of the West would have been
different” (Elizabeth Costello 118). Instead, the Church chose to claim a monopoly on
interpretation (Elizabeth Costello 119). According to the young man, whose argument is similar
to Nussbaum’s defense of the Humanities, the principle of interpretation is what makes the
Humanities the study of what reborn man can be:
‘It is the Humanities and the Humanities alone, and the training that the Humanities
provide, that will allow us to steer our way through this new multicultural world, and
precisely, precisely’ – he almost hammers the table, so exited has he grown – ‘because
the Humanities are about reading and interpretation. The Humanities begin, as our
lecturer [Bridget] said, in textual scholarship, and develop as a body of disciplines
devoted to interpretation.’ (Elizabeth Costello 119)
The similarity between the arguments by the young man and Nussbaum is emphasized shortly
after the former statement. When the Dean, who forced Bridget to limit her acceptance speech,
replies to the young man with the words “in fact, the human sciences,” the young man
disapproves: “that is a red herring, Mr. Dean. If you don’t mind, I will remain with either studia
or disciplines” (Elizabeth Costello 119). The Dean might prefer the word Sciences because he
tries to make the Humanities fit into an economy which prefers the Sciences over humanistic
Hoving 50
studies. The young man and Nussbaum, however, argue that the Humanities are not for profit
but for interpretation or the cultivation of the sympathetic imagination.
3.6.4 Elizabeth Costello: Hope
While listening to Professor Godwin, Elizabeth silently ridicules his statement about the
Humanities at the core of the university: “the Humanities at the core of the university. She may
be an outsider, but if she were asked to name the core business of the university today, its core
discipline, she would say it was moneymaking” (Elizabeth Costello 115). Elizabeth is the third
character who implicitly addresses the incorporation of neoliberal logic into contemporary
universities. Elizabeth explicitly questions Godwin’s statement about the implications of
Bridget’s critique of the Humanities when she asks whether Bridget meant that there was
“something wrong with placing hopes and expectations on the Humanities that they could never
fulfill? (Elizabeth Costello 115). Godwin does not reply and instead he is said to address
“himself to his salad” (Elizabeth Costello 115).
Because Elizabeth is the only focalizer in the narrative, she can silently ridicule not only
Godwin but also the young man. When the young man states that he prefers to refer to the
Humanities as studia or disciplines, rather than Sciences, Elizabeth thinks: “so young …, and
so sure of himself. He will remain with studia” (Elizabeth Costello 119). That the professors
and the Dean are all men (and moreover that the Dean uses the word mankind instead of
humankind) confirms another reason for Elizabeth’s dislike of the institutionalized Humanities:
“she has never been an aficionado of the Humanities. Something too complacently masculine
about the whole enterprise, too self-regarding” (Elizabeth Costello 120).
While Elizabeth dislikes the institutionalized Humanities, as represented by the young
man and professor Godwin, she also opposes Bridget’s argument against the Humanities.
Elizabeth, when discussing Hellenism with Bridget, argues that Hellenism was merely a phase
Hoving 51
in the Humanities and that there is a plethora of comparable periods to be found in the history
of the Humanities:
But Hellenism was surely just a phase in the history of the Humanities. Larger, more
inclusive visions of what human life can be have emerged since then. … I am just pointing
out that people cannot live without hope, or perhaps without illusions. If you turned to
any of those people we had lunch with and asked them, as humanists or at least as cardcarrying practitioners of the Humanities, to state the goal of all their efforts, surely they
would reply that, however indirectly, they strive to improve the lot of mankind. (Elizabeth
Costello 122)
Bridget regards these attempts as a failure: “it cannot be done. Extra ecclesiam nulla salvatio”,
there is no salvation outside the Church (Elizabeth Costello 122). Elizabeth does not argue
against Bridget; the world might not have improved in the way new forms of Humanism have
wanted. However, contrary to Bridget, Elizabeth does not consider the Humanities to be a
failure. Literary scholar Katherine Hallemeier argues that Elizabeth disagrees with Bridget
because she insists that the Humanities can and do affect human bodies because they allow for
the apprehension of the tragic and the miraculous, which are both parts of daily life, especially
suffering (50). Hence, Hallemeier argues that one of the lessons learned from “The Humanities
in Africa” could be “how we might re-imagine the Humanities as a way to live with suffering,
rather than as a means to abetting the end of suffering” (43).
Hallemeier, however, overlooks Elizabeth’s insistence on the importance of hope in
people’s lives: “people cannot live without hope” (Elizabeth Costello 122). Elizabeth does not
care that the Humanities have yet been unable to bring humankind salvation because the relation
the Humanities have to the body is that to live, people need hope, or dreams: “but how else are
we to live but by dreams?” (Elizabeth Costello 121). Whereas Bridget regards hope and dreams
as an abstract layer which distracts from quotidian existence, Elizabeth emphasizes that hopes
Hoving 52
and dreams are part of life. Elizabeth, earlier in the novel, states that she has no interest in the
future: “the future in general does not much interest me. What is the future after all, but a
structure of hopes and expectations? Its residence is in the mind; it has no reality” (Elizabeth
Costello 47-48). That Elizabeth has no an interest in the future does not mean that she thinks
hopes and dreams are powerless. According to Elizabeth, the power of hopes and dreams is that
they have an existence in and can structure the lived moment. Just as David’s act of hope
structures his present life, the political action of for example the Black Consciousness
Movement was preceded by a theoretical ideal.
3.7 Hope in Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello: A Comparison
In both Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello, hope is not a separated, abstract form of thought, but
instead formative of the present. This formative hope is important in relation to the theoretical
neoliberalism which dominates the context in which Coetzee is placed in this thesis because
this utopian theory presents itself as the only realistic way to structure society. The novels
thereby question the notion that There Is No Alternative because both David and Elizabeth
exemplify how acts in the present do not have to be based on what is considered realistic and
that they can be formed by hopes and dreams for a better world. Therefore, Elizabeth argues
that what Bridget believes to be failed renewed forms of Humanism are nonetheless effective,
even though they might not have had large-scale political effects. They are effective since they
are ideas about what a more just society could be and these ideas can serve as a guidance to
action in the present moment.
There is, however, an important difference in the kind of hopeful Humanism of both
Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello. Disgrace offers a hopeful portrayal of the Humanities as
becoming more inclusive, which hints at the possibility of the Africanization of curriculum and
research, as many African intellectuals demanded after the decolonization of Africa. Bridget,
Hoving 53
however, would oppose this idea of Humanism. The kind of Humanism Bridget opposes is
therefore for example described by Cornwell as reactionary (“Return to Humanism: The Future
of English Studies in South Africa” 4). What Cornwell does not mention is that Bridget,
moreover, opposes a Platonic idea of the Humanities. This is because the European Humanism
which was imposed on the (South) African population, and which has been rejected by them,
should not be replaced with a merely Africanized version of those same instrumentalized
Humanities: this would be a matter of “moving the centre” (Cornwell, “Return to Humanism”
7). Social accountability, which intellectuals such as Mamdani demanded, would imply merely
changing the power which the Humanities are supposed to serve, from the Apartheid regime to
the new South African nation.
What is needed instead, is Elizabeth’s revolutionary Humanism. This Humanism
believes in “the ability of human beings to emancipate and recreate themselves” (Cornwell,
“Return to Humanism” 4). Academic critique should, instead of (only) delivering reactionary
commentary, create anew; it should add to reality8. Thus, to Elizabeth, academic critique could
instead of merely revealing the content of a work of art, also be associated with multiplication,
or, with the shaping of worlds.
While both Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello emphasize the non-transcendental potential
of hope and thereby challenge the neoliberal slogan TINA, only Elizabeth Costello fully
articulates the role of the Humanities in testing this motto. Whereas a reading of Disgrace
reveals a multifaceted critique of the Humanities in South Africa, a sense of hope regarding a
reactionary Humanism, and a scholar who seeks to move beyond instrumental criticism,
Elizabeth Costello is the product of a scholar who seeks to add to existing critical practice. In
Philosopher Bruno Latour argues similarly and wonders: “what would critique do if it could
be associated with more not with less, with multiplication, not subtraction … that is,
generating more ideas than we have received, inheriting from a prestigious critical tradition
but not letting it die away …”. (232- 248)
8
Hoving 54
the 1992 interview in Chapter one, Coetzee states that if he were a “truly creative critic,” he
would “work toward liberating that [critical] discourse – making it less monological, for
instance,” but that “the candid truth” was that he did not have enough investment in criticism
to try to do so (Doubling the Point 246). Elizabeth Costello, however, proves that Coetzee is
truly a creative critic and that he has changed his mind regarding his investment in criticism.
Coetzee does have an investment in criticism because criticism will allow for the formulation
of possible futures other than a neoliberal utopia.
Moreover, Elizabeth’s Humanities are Socratic. The Humanities which Elizabeth
supports are not in the service of anything, and instead are a broad-based dialogue in (thus not
through) which all forms of power and authority are questioned. This makes Elizabeth’s
Humanities part of the University Without Condition, as proposed by Derrida, which is a
university which is opposed to all forms of power, such as the nation state, the economy, the
media, religion, and so forth (“The Future of the Profession” 26)
Elizabeth’s Humanities are politically effective precisely because they are not in the
service of any political program, not even political programs which seek for retribution for
terrible injustice in the past, such as Apartheid. Elizabeth’s Humanities are intrinsically
valuable because, as Coetzee stated, “freedom of thought is good in itself” (“J.M. Coetzee”).
Because Elizabeth’s Humanities are based on the imagination, because they are a form of play,
they are capable of confronting reality in Coetzee’s “active, David-and-Goliath spirit” (“Critic
and Citizen” 110), by offering alternatives to that reality. Derrida describes the University
Without Condition as follows:
[T]he principal right to say anything, whether it be under the header of fiction and the
experimentation of knowledge, and the right to say it publicly, to publish it. … [Is what]
fundamentally links the university, and above all the Humanities, to literature, in the
Hoving 55
European and modern sense of the term, as the right to say everything publicly, or to keep
it secret, if only in the form of fiction. (“The Future of the Profession” 26-27)
Thus, Coetzee’s remark regarding the heart of the university being a “European invention”
(“Critic and Citizen” 110), which was articulated before publishing Elizabeth Costello, but after
publishing Disgrace, has significant meaning. The University Without Condition has never
been in effect because what is its strength, being a stranger to power, is also its vulnerability
(Derrida, “The Future” 26-27). The European tradition of the novel, however, is the form in
which the University Without Condition can take shape.
Indeed, as Coetzee argues, not all intellectuals are creative, and not all creative people
are intellectuals (“Critic and Citizen” 109). Somewhere between publishing Disgrace and
Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee realized that to save humanistic inquiry from the contemporary
embattled situation in the Humanities, its creative potential needs to be emphasized and this
can be achieved by blurring the distinction between literature and criticism.
Hoving 56
4. Conclusion
In this thesis, Coetzee has not only been considered as a literary author, but as an academic
and a (public) intellectual as well. Coetzee’s fiction, his non-fictional writing, and interviews
with the author have been incorporated in the analysis of this thesis. The theoretical and
disciplinary pluralism, inspired by Deleuze’s esthetics, required for an understanding of such
a diverse range of texts has given rise to a fuller sense of Coetzee as an author-figure and
(public/academic) intellectual, both informed by an intellectual tradition and situated within a
historical context.
Interviews with Coetzee have shown how the legacy of deconstruction informs
Coetzee’s stance on the political function of literature. Moreover, a reading of interviews
dating from the beginning of the 1990’s to 2009 demonstrates that Coetzee has remained
relatively consistent regarding the intellectual tradition which informs his ideas about the
capabilities of literature.
However, in this thesis, it is argued that Coetzee’s stance on the political potential of
the Humanities underwent a change. The reason for this change is found in the exploration of
the historical context of globalized neoliberal capitalism in which Coetzee’s writing from the
early 1990’s to now can be placed. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello is the product of the author’s
effort to save humanistic inquiry from the institute of the university because this institute is
increasingly being incorporated into the neocolonial practices of the neoliberal knowledge
economy. According to Coetzee, the institute has proven to be more susceptible to the current
political climate than those who find themselves working or studying in the university wish it
to be. Before publishing Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee wrote either as an academic, or as a
novelist, as was the case with Disgrace, but Elizabeth Costello is a hybrid work consisting of
both criticism and fiction.
Hoving 57
To return to the central question of this thesis, the effects of Coetzee’s project, in
comparison to non-fictional criticism, can be categorized into three interventions. While the
novel in general can be a space for creative critique, as is the case with Disgrace, the hybrid
structure of Elizabeth Costello offers a way out of the ivory tower in which criticism finds
itself, a form of revolutionary humanistic inquiry, and a productive – thus not only critical intervention by which Coetzee becomes even more committed to the Humanities.
Firstly, the inventive structure of Elizabeth Costello allows Coetzee to bring criticism
out of the ivory tower of academia, into the realm of popular literature, and can thereby be
interpreted as an attempt to begin constructing Miyoshi’s alliance between academics and the
workers in Dayton, Ohio. Through literature, intellectuals can produce the kind of criticism
which encourages citizens to make and unmake the society in which they live. It must be
noted, however, that literature is also not read by everyone. Besides the fact that a novel needs
translation to be widely accessible, nearly seventeen percent of the world today remains
illiterate, of which two-thirds are women (“Statistics on Literacy”). Coetzee’s literary
intervention is certainly more accessible to a public which has not been schooled to
understand academic prose but it is still inaccessible to all those who are unable to read.
Secondly, Elizabeth’s revolutionary Humanism resists instrumentalization by not
merely being committed to the South African context and instead having a more global, or
universal, orientation. As stated in the introduction of this thesis, an international perspective
which takes the neocolonial nature of transnational corporatism into account is required to
understand the increasing influence of economics on universities. Coetzee’s emigration to
Australia, a year before Elizabeth Costello was published, is significant in this aspect;
Coetzee’s strive for a more global perspective is perhaps related to his move away from his
home country. In Disgrace, the contemporary economic, political, and social functions of the
university are placed within a South African framework. Elizabeth Costello elucidates the
Hoving 58
global scope required to understand the contemporary functions of the university and shows
that a new global imperialism might be the call for a more global or even universal
Humanities. Future research would be needed in to explore possible ideas regarding what
these universal Humanities could look like and what existing humanistic practices can be
regarded as part of them, in order to reach a more detailed comparison between this aspect of
Coetzee’s literary intervention and non-fictional criticism.
Thirdly, Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello is not merely critical but instead generative.
Through art, Coetzee encourages others to engage in the creation of political spaces in which
alternatives to neoliberal capitalism can be devised. The pluralism of the term political spaces
is significant. Importantly, this pluralism does not refer to there being no such thing as reality
or facts, even though post-structural notions of truth might seem to legitimize alternative
facts. In this thesis, it is argued that the irreducible plurality of literature and the irreducible
plurality of responses to literature lead to the formation of a plurality of utopias, which in turn
can serve to critique and counter the neoliberal utopia defining Coetzee’s time. A plurality of
utopias does not question empirical facts but it does challenge the slogan TINA because it
requires us to think about whether we want the world to be as it is. Moreover, it can be
assumed that Coetzee knows his literary writing makes its way into academia; his novels are
and will be studied. Elizabeth Costello is, therefore, a new mode of Coetzee’s commitment to
the university as well. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello might remind some of those involved in
the practice of humanistic inquiry that the Humanities, just as literature, have the potential to
be a venture into the not-yet-thought and can participate in the telling of truths.
Hoving 59
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