| |
|
›
Current Issue
|
|
 
›
Volume 5, December 2004
Archive:
›Volume
32, 2019
›Volume 31, 2018
›Volume 30, 2018
›Volume
29, 2017
›Volume 28, 2017
›Volume
27, 2016
›Volume
26, 2016
›Volume
25, 2015
›Volume
24, 2015
›Volume
23, 2014
›Volume
22, 2014
›Volume
21, 2013
›Volume
20, 2013
›Volume
19, 2012
›Volume
18, 2012
›Volume
17, 2011
›Volume
16, 2011
›Volume
15, 2010
›Volume
14, 2010
›Volume
13, 2009
›Volume
12, 2009
›Volume
11, 2008
›Volume
10, 2008
›Volume
9, 2007
›Volume
8, 2007
›Volume
7, 2006
›Volume
6, 2005
›Volume
5, 2004
›Volume
4,
2001
›Volume
3, 2000
›Volume
2, 1999
›Volume
1, 1999
|
|
| |
|
 |
| |
|
|
Dis/Graceful Liberties:
Textual Libertinism/ Libertine Texts in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
|
|
|
|
HAGER BEN DRISS
|
University of Tunis |
|
Abstract |
|
|
This essay addresses J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, a Booker Prize winner in 1999. The novel captures South African political and cultural turmoil attending the post-apartheid transitional period. Far from overlooking the political allegory, I propose instead to expand on a topic only cursorily developed elsewhere, namely liberty and license. The two terms foreground the textual dynamics of the novel as they compete and/or negotiate meaning and ascendency. I argue that Disgrace is energized by Coetzee’s belief in a total liberty of artistic production. Sex is philosophically problematized in the text and advocated as a serious issue that deserves artistic investigation without restriction or censorship. This essay looks into the subtle libertinism in Coetzee’s text, which displays pornographic overtones without exhibiting a flamboyant libertinage. Disgrace acquires its libertine gesture from its dialogue with several literary works steeped in libertinism. The troubled relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical yields an ambiguous text that invites a responsible act of reading.
Keywords:
J.M. Coetzee, South Africa, Post-apartheid, intertextuality, liberty and license, literature and philosophy, libertinage, freedom, sexuality |
| |
|
BACK
|
|
|
