Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 False Generosity of the State: Parasitic Subjectivity in J. M. Coetzee's 'Life and Times of Michael K'
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This paper holds that J. M. Coetzee’s novel, Life and Times of Michael K, demonstrates how apartheid, in order to preserve its domination over the nonwhite population of South Africa, as with other authoritarian regimes, commonly encouraged dependency. Its various institutions and camps aimed precisely to create a culture of dependence and to fashion subjects utterly dependent on the state. A dependent subject is a powerless, exploitable, and controllable subject; this is the right kind of subject for colonizers. The black majority of South Africa, then, could only have a parasitic existence, completely dependent on their white masters. The novel narrates how dependence is created through the false generosity of the state. As Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed argued, false charity is a state strategy that serves to reproduce the relations of domination. Coetzee’s novel, thus, suggests that to undermine the structure of domination, the oppressed have to reject the culture of dependence and the parasitic subjectivity that arise from the false generosity of the state.' (Source: publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 6 May 2020 14:18:17
False Generosity of the State: Parasitic Subjectivity in J. M. Coetzee's 'Life and Times of Michael K'small AustLit logo Anglia : Zeitschrift fur Englische Philologie
Subjects:
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X