It explores the themes of truth and reconciliation in disgrace by J M Coetzee and how Post Colonialism has an effect on it

1. TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION IN
DISGRACE BY LIZALISE IDINGA LAKHO
PART 4
SYEDA FATIMATUZ ZAHRA

2. ROMANTICS AND LURIE
• Male romantics typically appropriated the
(female) other in their quest for autonomy
and innovation for, the “aggrandizement
of the male literary consciousness”.
• Such an evaluation of the male
Romantic’s literary ego is reflected in
Lurie’s disingenuous apology to Melanie’s
father Mr. isaac’ and in his belief that all
his relationships with women have
“enriched” him:

3. BYRON AND LURIE
• Lurie finally turns not to the voice of Teresa but to
the comic. drawing the conclusion that Byron in
Italy, like he himself, is “going nowhere”, he takes
up his daughter’s toy banjo to compose his opera
in the realization that: it is not the erotic that is
calling to him after all, nor the elegiac, but the
comic.
• He is in the opera neither as Teresa nor as Byron
nor even as some blending of the two: he is held
in the music itself, in the flat tinny slap of the
banjo strings … So this is art, he thinks, and this is
how it does its work! (DIS 184–85)

4. OPERA NARRATIVE
• John Banville is right to suggest in his review of Disgrace that “the operatic theme
fits oddly into the scheme of the book”; nonetheless, his explanation, that it
functions as a “counterpoint to the general minimalist bleakness of the story”
(Banville 23), is insubstantial. The opera narrative deliberately draws
attention to itself as disjointed and, in the model of confession
sketched by Coetzee of the confessant searching for self-truths, is a
more authentic expression of Lurie's consciousness. Although initially he
fails to connect with either Byron or the “female” voice, Lurie’s increasing
identification with Teresa marks an acceptance of a newer truth and an unspoken
but internally articulated ethical transition. The spontaneity he attains on the
strings of the banjo characterizes “deeper”, authentic truths, signaling
that Lurie is learning to speak from the heart.

5. HUMANSVS. ANIMALS,THE LIMITS OF DESIRE !
• Lurie’s passion is animalistic, predatory.
• Lucy is treated “like a dog” by the men who
rape her who themselves behave “like dogs
in a pack”
• Petrus, Lucy’s black neighbor, introduces
himself to Lurie as the “dog-man” only to
reject this position as he gains autonomy
within the “new South Africa” in theory, as
the white, non-democratic powerbase is
dismantled.

6. HUMANSVS. ANIMALS, DESTRUCTION
VS. REDEMPTION
• It is finally through dogs that Lurie
struggles for atonement.
• Lurie can find redemption through caring
for sick animals.
• The juxtaposition of animal and human
suffering brings this form of suffering into
relief, in the context of inequality that
has been largely racially determined.
Find
Redemption

7. SEDUCTION OF AN ANALOGY
• Marjorie Garber
• An ill-conceived yet seemingly credible appropriation
of one term . (Freud)
• 1999, movement for The Lives of Animals.
• In Disgrace and Lives this approach is used to show the
suffering of animals in order to illuminate another:
oppressed people.
• Such a “seduction” is best illustrated in Lives when Costello
likens the treatment of animals in factory farms to that of the
Jews in the Nazi concentration camps (the animals to
humans analogy is reversed in Disgrace).

9. DOG AS A SYMBOL OF REDEMPTION IN DISGRACE
• In Coetzee's model of confession Lurie form a close bond
with the dogs under his care and strives to return to the
animals – even as corpse.
• By relinquishing his care of the dog for euthanasia,
sacrificing the emotional investment he has made in it,
Lurie finds, in one sense, closure for the cycle of self-
excoriation and self-revelation.
• He has atoned, albeit minimally, for his
transgression, both in working with the dogs and in
this act of giving up; the gesture marks a conclusion of
sorts to this process.

10. SELFISHNESSVS. ATONEMENT
• Lurie learns through processes of empathy to give voice to theTeresa
character in his opera rather than the salacious Byron with whom he
first identifies. Nonetheless, the motive for this gesture is itself
questionable since he can only suppress his violent rage against
Pollux throughTeresa, “that is why he must listen to
Teresa. Teresa may be the last one left who
can save him” (209).
• Lurie is propelled on to a journey of self-discovery and personal
atonement which ultimately is revealed to be morally bankrupt for he
visits Melanie’s family home and, in an act of what Graham Pechey
calls “grotesque obeisance” (“PurgatorialAfrica” 381), kisses the feet
of her father, all the while secretly lusting after Melanie’s even more
beautiful sister, the aptly named desire. Lurie's failure to atone
for the affair signals that this is also a novel about
saving oneself.

11. HISTORY HAS “COME FULL CIRCLE”
• Coetzee finally draws the animal and opera subtexts together
with Lurie’s half ironic notion of introducing a dog into the
opera. Surely, in a work that will never be
performed, all things are permitted?”
• Lurie symbolically relinquishes his authority as white writer
(or is relinquished of this authority) when he realizes that as a
“figure from the margins of history … [h]e is
inventing the music (or the music is inventing him)
but he is not inventing the history”

12. SYMBOL OF OPERA
• He wonders, “Will this [the
Eastern Cape] be where
the dark trio [Byron,
Teresa and ‘the humiliated
husband’] are at last
brought to life: not in
Cape Town but in old
Kaffraria?”