Being Irresponsible in J.M. Coetzee's Novel 'Disgrace'

Abstract

'Disgrace' makes visible a kind of ethics that cannot be absorbed, reconciled, or appeased by the individual and society, the self and the other, the particular and the general. The sorts of decisions, actions, and responsibilities that take place in this novel reveal the untenable divide between the single experience of injustice and general injustice, private ethics and public ethics, contemporary violence and historical violence. 'Disgrace' explores an unfinished ethics operating in and through the secret heart-land of postapartheid-era South Africa. J.M. Coetzee writes within and through a developing new world order where division and difference are not destroyed or demolished, but forced underground and transformed. The external, public story of South Africa supports the small-scale story of David Lurie, a middle-aged academic whose personal sense of justice and ethics disturbs public justice and ethics. Far from the ideal hero, yet not quite "bad" enough to be an antihero, Lurie is a character whose misanthropy and cynicism jars against the public image of a nation striving for radical reconciliation and moral renewal. The complex political terrain underpinning, preceding, and surviving this novel provides a rich historical background through which an internal, private ethics us foregrounded.