Constructing the Self and the Other in John Maxwell Coetzee’s Farm Novels

In postcolonial literature, the issue of identity and otherness are the two main topics that scholars have dealt with. As a writer whose novels were characterized by postcolonial writing, John Maxwell Coetzee left a mark in English literature through his unique style that he embraced in his novels In the Heart of the Country (1977) and Disgrace (1999). In the two novels, Coetzee takes the traditional ‘plaasroman’ as a model, which is an “early twentieth-century Afrikaans novel concerned itself almost exclusively with the farm and platteland (rural society)” (Coetzee 63). However, he transforms it into a place of battle where the characters fight to acquire an identity, instead of depicting it as an idyll. As opposed to his contemporaries, Coetzee has given much more importance to his characters’ psyche to indirectly focus on South African history, social problems, and identity issues. Though he was criticized by critics, most scholars and Coetzee himself believed that he provided a better understanding of South Africa through focusing on his characters’ struggles, which is their wish to construct their authentic identity in colonial and postcolonial South Africa. Connected to these, in this thesis postcolonial and feminist theories are used to analyze how the othering, caused by patriarchy and racial systems in apartheid and post-apartheid periods, occurs in the novels. The selected characters Magda from In the Heart of the Country and Lucy and David from Disgrace are either forcibly or voluntarily are exiled or secluded from their surroundings, mentally or physically. As affected by isolation connected to othering, they have to give up on their true selves to conform to their new surroundings. Based on this, this thesis firstly focuses on how they try to reconstruct their fractured identity in isolation. Later, the characters’ desires will also be analyzed in comprehending their true selves. Also, this reconstruction of identity is shown to be affected by a huge problem in South Africa, which is sexual violence. As the characters either are forced to or force sexual acts upon others in both of the books, this traumatic experience turns out to be a climax moment for each one of them. In the last part, language and silence is taken as a central focus. Besides being the fundamental communication vehicle for people, in both In the Heart of the Country and Disgrace, language becomes a tool with which each character fights for their authentic identity to find a place within the patriarchal and racially structured society of South Africa. In connecting isolation, desire, sexual violence, and language, this thesis shows how Coetzee portrays the realities of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa by giving each character a voice through which they strive for creating a new sense of self.