Abstract

SMITH, Craig. The Anticipation of #MeToo in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace. JLS [online]. 2022, vol.38, n.2, pp.1-13. ISSN 1753-5387.  http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/1753-5387/11054.

In this article, I reconsider J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, often interpreted in the context of South Africa's transition to post-apartheid life and with an eye to the nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, by instead reading it in light of the international twenty-first century #MeToo movement. I contend that, in retrospect, Disgrace both demonstrates affinities with #MeToo and proleptically envisions, from the postcolonial periphery, the contours of the movement decades before its forceful emergence as a watershed moment in the West. Disgrace tells a story echoed in many #MeToo accounts, depicting the public exposure and fall from grace of a privileged white man following his sexual exploitation of a non-white student. My interests lie not in the matter of David Lurie's potential redemption; rather, I explore Coetzee's exposure of the persistence of institutionalised gendered and racial privileges through moments of historical transformation. I argue that Disgrace's highlighting of its own unnarrated perspectives anticipates the forceful challenge to a lingering white heterosexual hegemony that characterises #MeToo, while at the same time exposing the perpetual marginalisation of non-white and non-Western traumas in discourses of transitional justice in South Africa and globally.

Keywords : Coetzee; Disgrace; TRC; #MeToo; sexual violence.

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