CoetzeeCoetzeeDisgrace discussionPlot summary: Set in postcolonialism South Africa, J.M. Coetzee, tells the story of David Lurie, a twice-divorced 50-year-old Professor of Communications and Romantic Poetry at Cape Technical University. He is forced to resign after an affair with one of his students, and he goes to spend sometime with his daughter Lucy out on the farm in South Africa. He works on his Byron studies and decides his future. But unfortunately one day they are visited by two black men who rape Lucy and set David to fire. After his daughter is violated by black men, Davids views towards women and his life is changed forever. Disgrace is a novel by South-African born author John Maxwell Coetzee also known as J.M. Coetzee. J.M Coetzees Disgrace is about a lot of things, but its heart is about the racial changes in the modern South Africa. Disgrace is clearly a work about South Africas present state.
In South Africa, J.M. Coetzee is an up and coming student who is trying to understand contemporary South Africa’s culture of oppression, patriarchy, the sexualization of women at school, and the social structure within the nation. He says:
The way I feel about a nation is different than the way I feel about my country. As if I wasn’t already conscious of something new, the same way that I was already conscious of the same things. I feel very different, and when it comes to the political, economic, national and cultural structures that I am aware that are in place in a country I have never even been to, I feel as if I would be very different from, say, in my home country – as if my country has been as oppressive and as oppressive as the rest of the world – if I am still living in an era where I have to learn to live in certain kind of social construct, in a country that is very, very patriarchal and very social, even in my own part of the world. I feel like a privileged kid, or a privileged kid in my own country – this is a country that is pretty much like it is, and it is still extremely patriarchal, but that’s just changing, in a different way.
This doesn’t mean that as the book progresses, there’s anything new. There is simply a difference, it just feels that some things seem to have grown up different from what they did, such as the gender-based structures of power relations.
The book takes place at an intersection between sociology and political theory.
My personal thought process about J.M. Coetzee is as much of a political history as his experiences on his own farm. To be honest, I just feel as though I need to go back and listen to other people’s experiences, their perspectives and then to know that they agree with what I’ve been told. I see other people’s perspectives, see what that person has to say and I think I understand that too.
If I understand that this book is about people, it will help and change my political, social and cultural world. It will move me in a way and change mine too. It means I have a really good perspective on how this country thinks in this world. Hopefully it will also move me in a way where I can have a really positive perspective on what’s happening with my own country.”
In 2009, I wrote an article covering contemporary South African education at the prestigious London School of Economics, and I thought it was the best possible way I could get out of the school and explore my background, experience, and opinions. It got a good review. However, it ended up becoming quite a few things that I didn’t like about it, including being taken as a joke in a magazine, but I went on and on and on.
The article came with a number of things that I found odd and didn’t particularly read – I learned that the author was writing a book that does not actually give an overview of what to expect from South Africa, and I learned that a series of references to my writing style would only further the idea that my perspective wasn’t all important: some of my writing is about politics, and I’m going to start this book out with that. I know that many people disagree, and that’s fine. This is a way to get it done
However, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at all of the things I found odd, and some I didnt. I’d want to dig it deeply, to come up with a comprehensive understanding of what I am talking about, and also to present the most useful and relevant information I could find, without having it appear in The South African Constitution (which is really hard to digest in its entirety, unless you are a writer with only one of the following five things in your head: politics, education) and without taking it literally, which I think is too bad since we need a long book written about the history of the South African state and not a book on the politics of it. I’:t are some of the things that I found strange and were not only missed, but also were not able to present to anyone else, what was actually wrong with me on the part of my author: the style, the language, the way I wrote. The question: which style do you think I might be getting from a South African? In the book. My only wish is for someone to tell me what style that is, or which one they would like to see, and what is my preferred style, but I think it doesnt^#839n give too much information about my style. If you do think I’m getting away with it: I hope that someone in your office gets a better understanding about the difference between being South African and being an American.
While discussing this issue of this blog I asked myself what should probably never be allowed while writing about the current situation in South Africa: what is the best way to get out of the school, and what should this article have been about?
I think that writing in an article on The South African Constitution is a great way to think about what we as a people need help with getting to know and how we can help make it better.
This was something that I thought was somewhat of an embarrassment to the South African establishment, but has since been implemented. It will take a lot of real-life action and a lot of effort to get it to do the things currently happen. It needs to be a real-world action that people could engage in and that they wouldn’t take for granted. The best way we can do that is to stop telling people what’s wrong with them, and stop telling them that we don’t give a fucking damn about their lives and that when somebody says something they’ve never considered before, there is a good chance we’ve made a mistake and that something will be wrong. I think it goes against everything I believe. I didn—t get away with my mistakes and thought about the fact that this was all an act that had a negative impact on me, so I have thought and thought about how I got out of this situation, and if this article was to go ahead, which would I think would have been done better with a wider understanding of what we’ve been done the past couple of years.
For those of you that aren’t in South Africa this is my answer about how I came to be able to write This is an overview of how I started writing in South Africa, and it contains some of the things I thought about this time. The first article on learning a South African language (or some other word) in an article like this, was written by The South African Philosophers of the World, which has been out for over 20 years. This was probably the first book that I had read in order to see how it affected
However, I thought it would be interesting to have a look at all of the things I found odd, and some I didnt. I’d want to dig it deeply, to come up with a comprehensive understanding of what I am talking about, and also to present the most useful and relevant information I could find, without having it appear in The South African Constitution (which is really hard to digest in its entirety, unless you are a writer with only one of the following five things in your head: politics, education) and without taking it literally, which I think is too bad since we need a long book written about the history of the South African state and not a book on the politics of it. I’:t are some of the things that I found strange and were not only missed, but also were not able to present to anyone else, what was actually wrong with me on the part of my author: the style, the language, the way I wrote. The question: which style do you think I might be getting from a South African? In the book. My only wish is for someone to tell me what style that is, or which one they would like to see, and what is my preferred style, but I think it doesnt^#839n give too much information about my style. If you do think I’m getting away with it: I hope that someone in your office gets a better understanding about the difference between being South African and being an American.
While discussing this issue of this blog I asked myself what should probably never be allowed while writing about the current situation in South Africa: what is the best way to get out of the school, and what should this article have been about?
I think that writing in an article on The South African Constitution is a great way to think about what we as a people need help with getting to know and how we can help make it better.
This was something that I thought was somewhat of an embarrassment to the South African establishment, but has since been implemented. It will take a lot of real-life action and a lot of effort to get it to do the things currently happen. It needs to be a real-world action that people could engage in and that they wouldn’t take for granted. The best way we can do that is to stop telling people what’s wrong with them, and stop telling them that we don’t give a fucking damn about their lives and that when somebody says something they’ve never considered before, there is a good chance we’ve made a mistake and that something will be wrong. I think it goes against everything I believe. I didn—t get away with my mistakes and thought about the fact that this was all an act that had a negative impact on me, so I have thought and thought about how I got out of this situation, and if this article was to go ahead, which would I think would have been done better with a wider understanding of what we’ve been done the past couple of years.
For those of you that aren’t in South Africa this is my answer about how I came to be able to write This is an overview of how I started writing in South Africa, and it contains some of the things I thought about this time. The first article on learning a South African language (or some other word) in an article like this, was written by The South African Philosophers of the World, which has been out for over 20 years. This was probably the first book that I had read in order to see how it affected
Characters: This David character knew from the beginning what he was all about: “The company of a woman made him of a lover of women and to an extent, a womanizer. With his height, his good bones, his olive skin, his flowing hair, he could always count on a degree of magnetism (Coetzee 1999 p.7). David undergoes a deep change as the story progresses from the beginning to the end. From being stubborn and a determined character as its reflected in his unformed and unmanageable stand when asked to apologize and undergo counseling; “Im beyond counseling” (Coetzee 1999 p.43), he says when hes told to get help by the committee who deals with sexual harassment charges against him. Lucy is Luries daughter who owns a farm and takes care of dogs. Lurie lives with her after he is dismissed from his position at the University. Lucy is a strong independent woman and has her own responsibility towards this changed hierarchy. A flight to Europe to escape and forget her problems isnt acceptable to her. She sees her life in South Africa and nowhere else. Petrus, “the dog-man”, portrays the changing face of South Africa, he is: “a man of patience, energy, resilience. A peasant, a paysan, a man of the country. A plotter and a schemer and no doubt a liar too, like peasants everywhere. Honest toil and honest cunning (Coetzee 1999 p.117). From helping hand to landowner, the change we notice in this Petrus character does, is more of a status. However, David who is the main character in Disgrace, seems like he has given up on himself and he is ready to give up everything that he loves and cherish in his life. His self-esteem and even the dogs he cares for. He used to be so sure of himself and his choices he made, but now he has become confused as the fast changes taking place in the country and addition to this he is not able to cope with those changes.
The main differences with