"Lacking Members of Play": Sexual/Textual Politics in J. M. Coetzee's Foe

• Albany Murdoch ^[1]
  1. [1] Massey University

     Massey University

     Nueva Zelanda

     
• Localización: Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, ISSN 0004-1327, ISSN-e 1920-1222, Vol. 55, Nº. 3-4, 2024, págs. 111-131
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • This essay considers the divide between two camps of critics responding to the use and potential abuse of a white woman narrator in J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) and finds within the novel a critique of contemporaneous feminist discourses. I identify a rhetoric of rape deployed by the novel's protagonist, Susan, against the mute ex-slave, Friday, and consider its effect on Susan's ability to mediate between oppressed and dominant groups, represented by Friday and the author—(De)Foe—respectively. Ultimately, I argue that Susan's curiously masculine sense of desire complicates the charge that Coetzee is simply appropriating the voice of a woman, finding instead that he utilises Susan's attempted penetration into Friday's silence to demonstrate the faults of a second-wave feminism that exploits various categories of otherness.