School of Culture and Society Department of International Migration and Ethnic Relations

A Road That May Lead Nowhere

Identity and Repetition in Coetzee's Waiting for the

Barbarians

Peder Gravlund

En 103: Fall Term

Supervisor: Lena Christensen

January 5, 2010

Abstract

In this essay I conduct a close-reading of the protagonist of J.

M. Coetzee's novel Waiting for the Barbarians, the Magistrate. Using the

concept of repetition as a producer of difference I attempt to

study how his sense of identity is gradually undermined as the

fundaments of his world view are challenged by events unfolding in

the present which cannot be properly explained with concepts and

representations from the past. The Magistrate becomes aware that

the Empire, which he serves, is based on a false stability which

is affirmed through a dichotomy between Empire and barbarians,

where the benevolence of the former is affirmed by violence

towards the latter. As the Magistrate realizes his own

participation in this structure he is rendered increasingly

ambivalent regarding his understanding of himself and his

position, as he is unable to trust the categorizations generated

by the ideology of the Empire. But while he manages to resist the

false stability, he fails to properly accept the idea of a

fundamental ambiguity which demands a contingent, contextualized

conception of the world. Hence, he is left confused, grasping for

a significance he cannot construe and unable to understand that he

must formulate it himself.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction..................................................1

2. Repetition and Identity.......................................3

3. Waiting for the Barbarians....................................6

3. 1 The Arrival, or Introduction of Doubt...................7

3. 2. Torture and the Question of Responsibility ...........9

3. 3. Interpretations of Signs..............................11

3. 4. Affirmation of Otherness..............................12

3. 5. The Girl and the Split Self .........................14

3. 6. Re-affirmation of the Past............................17

3. 7. In Opposition, or Becoming an Other...................19

3. 8. The Issue of Ethics...................................21

3. 9. Re-formation of an Unstable Self......................23

4. The Magistrate's Failure to Affirm Repetition as Difference. .25

5. Works Cited..................................................30

Gravlund 1

1. Introduction

In Henrik Ibsen's play The Wild Duck the character of doctor

Relling explains that if you deprive the average person of his

life-lie, you instantly rob him of his happiness. We need abstract

conceptions, dreams and ideas to keep our lives from appearing

unbearably meaninglessness, and we require representations upon

which we hinge our conceptions in order to gain stability in our

understanding of the world. However, when a life-lie is seriously

confronted a crisis occurs, and we must either give up our lie or

attempt to accommodate it to a new situation. In this light, the

thought of a life-lie captures a certain tendency in us to

rationalize our understanding of life in a manner that gives life

meaning; a tendency that can work either positively or negatively.

South African author J. M. Coetzee has adopted this approach

in his writing, as he tends to position an individual in a

problematic situation where unresolved issues – or simply memories

and ideas – from the past are repeated, brought to light and

questioned in the present. When the result is a conflict, the idea

of the self is challenged because its fundamental context is being

altered. In other words, the components of which the conception of

the self is constructed is shifting.

Gravlund 2

In this essay I will analyze Coetzee's novel Waiting for the

Barbarians (2000)1 by applying the philosophical concept of repetition

to its narrative. I will unravel how the identity of a protagonist

subject, the Magistrate, is undermined as his conception of self

is repeated in a context where it fails to be affirmed

unproblematically. That is, how the subject handles a profound and

continuous challenge of the fundaments of his identity.

In Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee uses a subjective

protagonist's perspective. This highlights the mechanism in

progress when the subject attempts to define himself while he

simultaneously establishes his relation to the world. The main

issue is the subject's difficulty to adapt to a situation which

does not correlate to his world view; the individual might

experience himself an anachronism, whose constitution no longer

fits into the present. I will argue that repetition is an

effective concept in describing how the past no longer can supply

the present with a coherent understanding of the world and further

how this affects identity.

As the title suggests it is a novel about waiting; the

barbarians never come.2 Instead, the focus concerns what happens to1 I will refer to this primary text by supplying only page numbers.2 The novel has supposedly borrowed its title from C. P. Cavafy's poem with the

same name (http://cavafis.compupress.gr/kave_32.htm). The title of the poem, and the novel, suggests a connotation to an imperialistic project based upon

Gravlund 3

a society preparing for something, and how this implication can be

used to affirm an authoritative structure. In reacting to this

affirmation, the Magistrate is standing at a crossroads that might

lead either to self-understanding and insight, or throw him into a

state of estrangement in relation both to himself and to the

world.

Now, my primary aim is to investigate how the stability of the

protagonist's identity is compromised as he is subjected to a

situation where ambiguity is introduced, and to observe what

consequences this has for his understanding of the world and

himself. The method of my analysis will be to apply the

philosophical concept of repetition as a distributor of difference

to the narrative, while presuming a notion of identity formation.

I will suggest that fixed categories are false by definition and

always illusory, and as such generally vehicles for the

reaffirmation of a certain ideological power structure, in this

case the Empire. An identity constituted upon this fundament I

will label a 'life-lie'. What happens to identity when its

fundament is challenged by repetition? My secondary aim is to

argue that identity is impossible to sustain in this situation.

the perception of the barbarian other (Head, 49). Another possible source of influence would be Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, which also deals withthe effects of a lack of expected presence.

Gravlund 4

I am also curious to see how well this method responds to the

text in which it is put to work. I have not read a great number of

prior interpretations in detail before commencing my own analysis

of the novel. The reason is not an unwillingness to acknowledge

prior suggestions,3 but simply because my task at hand is not a

strict analytic commentary on the text as such. Rather it is an

attempt to submit the text to a certain theory of repetition. The

main point of this reading is not a suggestion of the novel's

meaning, but to read according to a certain point of view. In this

I am inspired by David Attridge's method of reading “against

allegory” which focuses not on what something (interpretations,

allegories) means, but rather what it does, how it functions in the

text (Attridge, 76). In other words: understanding meaning as a

verb instead of a noun – an event (Attridge, 77). Consequently, I

will attempt to remain within the actual narrative to discuss the

workings of a specific subject and its struggle with its own

singular self.

Structurally, I will apply a more or less chronological close-

reading, allowing space for reflections and digressions when

called for. This perspective seems logical, since the analysis3 According to Coetzee scholar David Attridge, Waiting for the Barbarians has

generally been approached as a political allegory concerning the state of apartheid South Africa in general, and the role of the liberal humanist in particular (Attridge, 73).

Gravlund 5

will focus on the development (or deconstruction) of a subject

within a linear narrative. Hence, I follow L. Hillis Miller's

notion of the narrative function of repetition as recurring

concepts and themes which develop into having new meaning in

relation to events unfolding within the text (Miller, 1).

2. Repetition and Identity

The two main perspectives concerning repetition can be divided

into Platonic and Nietzschean repetition. The first considers

difference as deviation between stable, preestablished identities,

while the other considers the world as fundamentally disparate,

where identity and similitude are constructions (Miller, 5-6)4.

The shift between them is one from identity to difference, and I

will sketch a short historical overview to present the theoretical

background to the approach this present work has adapted.

Early repetition, characteristic in primitive, tribal

societies, stretching to ancient Greece, signifies an archaic

conception of time as circular based on the cycle of seasons,

eternally returning to a beginning (Eliade, 41). This idea is

characterized by the recurrence of the identical same, where

4 Miller bases his discussion on Gilles Deleuze's definition of repetition in Logique du sense. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1969. p. 302.

Gravlund 6

repetition is only a reproduction or imitation of prior events and

actions which has been rendered mythical. It is a conception into

which nothing new is introduced.

This perspective was challenged by the linear

conceptualizations of Christianity and Judaism, which established

history and duration. But this perspective, too, came to regard

the unfolding of time and events as a perpetual reproduction of

the same: that all could be reduced to God. Time is a progressing

line, but one which can be reduced to the repetition of the same.

This means a continuous strict “privileging of the past”, and

variation is thus still related to an original condition (Gendron,

5).

However, by denying the universal claim of an original

condition, of which we really no nothing, modern philosophy

problematized repetition as the vehicle for “producing a

conclusive truth.” (Gendron, 5) Instead emerged “the conception of

repetition as a force that simultaneously reproduced one thing and

produced another thing anew. No longer privileging a past by

honoring the return of the Self same or the return to an origin or

a beginning, repetition looked forward to the future and to the

production of difference” (Gendron, 6). This transition towards

Gravlund 7

difference is mainly represented by Sören Kierkegaard, Friedrich

Nietzsche and Deleuze.

For Kierkegaard repetition is not only a return of the

familiar, but also a paradoxical introduction of new meaning:

“Recollecting forward”. The recollection gathers meaning from the

past to the present, while the forward movement lets the endless

possibilities of the future (God) open up to the present (Mooney,

286). This double movement signifies repetition as a force of

renewal, a transcendental leap of faith beyond fixed categories

constituted on universal principles. The perspective of life must

never be reduced to the ideal, but should function according to

the temporary. (Kierkegaard, Upprepningen 119) In short, to consider

the world both as it is and how it could be, and to acknowledge

one's ignorance regarding either. Ethics thus turns from a

universal duty to be obeyed, to a personal responsibility of critical

reflection (Dooley, 87).

According to Nietzsche the fundamental principle of being is

becoming. From this follows that only that which can produce new

meaning is repeated; identity, as all rigid categories, must be

overcome in order to affirm the movement towards the new.

(Deleuze, Nietzsche 94) It is thus his famous conception of 'the

Gravlund 8

eternal recurrence'5 must be understood: a the repetition of

difference. However, in contrast to Kierkegaard, this movement is

not transcendental, but rather a resistance to, and the destroying

of all categories to enable the constant affirmation of life's

variability in itself. It is a resistance to any subjugation to

'the beyond' in favor of the creative force of the singular

individual. Value must always be derived from the experience of

life – moment by moment – and not from predefined truths of any

kind (Gravlund, 37-38).

Deleuze picks up the thread from Nietzsche and states

repetition as that which cannot be generalized; all categories are

temporary conceptualization of that which by nature is contingent

(Deleuze, Difference 1-2). Identity, then, is only a contingent

expression of varieties in a certain time and place. Only the

distribution of difference is permanent.6 Deleuze's perspective can

be construed as an intellectual process of creative destruction,

leaving the old behind while accepting the new and thus

problematizing the subject's seemingly natural relation to objects

(Gravlund, 41).

5 Which is formulated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Så Talade Zarathustra. Trans. Albert Eriksson. Forum: Ungern, 1982. Print.)

6 Difference should be understood as an active, independent principle in this context – the making of difference – rather than something that describes the level of similitude between two objects.

Gravlund 9

Repetition is a concept that demands of the subject to remain

in the temporary; to repeatedly affirm its position in the

contingent moment, in a state not of being but of becoming. One

must distance oneself from the conformative, rigid categories and

revive one's understanding of the world by virtue of repetition:

that every element carries a new meaning to the context in which

it is repeated. However, repetition is far from obvious to the

conscious subject and rather works through what Walter Benjamin

called “opaque similarity”, which functions like the obscure

association of dreams, “in which one thing is experienced as

repeating something which is quite different from it and which it

strangely resembles” (Miller, 8). That is, a play of symbols,

signs and significance on an unconscious level which escapes

rational logic and can only be exemplified (Miller, 9). This

resembles how Kierkegaard describes the leap of faith through the

example of Abraham and Isaac, where he urges his readers to repeat

Abraham's faith, not his particular actions (Fear and Trembling 61):

the affirmation of a singular experience beyond the means of

expression within the universal (that is language).

The consequence is a constant deferral of final meaning and,

hence, an impossibility to establish stable truths. Categories,

Gravlund 10

concepts and representations must always be axioms, negotiable

assumptions, based on the contingence of a constantly

differentiated experience of reality.

According to Kierkegaard, repetition can be described as ”the

moment [when] the present self is confronted with the past self,

and the individual must recognize himself […] [R]epetition mark[s]

the failure to come to terms with one’s past” (Nymann Eriksen,

22). In short, the subject is the place where repetition occurs,

either in the form of reminiscence, letting the past be confronted

by the present, or in the form of an external conception – an

idea, a representation – being expressed during the subject's

struggle to ascribe meaning to its existence. I will relate this

movement as crucial to the idea of identity formation. In this I

will turn to G H Mead's idea of a “generalized other” suggesting

how the subject assumes different roles/positions through which it

observes itself; that is, imagines how others would perceive it

and thus generates an external position which combined with the

internal conception of the self constitutes identity (Mead, 154).

A differentiation of identity signifies, by this process, being

divided into incompatible, or incoherent correspondences with the

experienced situation visa-vi the present conception of self

Gravlund 11

(Mead, 144). The subject thus constitutes its identity in a

constant play between its singular experiences of the world and an

interpretation of the normative conception of this experience.

3. Waiting for the Barbarians

Coetzee's narrative is set in an undefined time and place and

relates the story of a Magistrate who presides over a small

settlement in the outskirts of the Empire. He is an elderly man,

nearing the end of his duty and wishes for nothing to disturb his

sleepy, comfortable existence. He spends his days carrying out his

humble administrative and judicial responsibilities, and in his

leisure time he indulges in culture and amateur archeology. To

'care for' his bodily needs, he regularly visits a young

prostitute. Of the so called barbarians in his vicinity he sees

little apart from a few instances of trade and minor disturbances,

which he resolves by 'fair' reciprocation. But one day his

tranquil existence is disturbed by the arrival of a group of

police officials belonging to a national security organization:

The Third Bureau of the Civil Guard. They have been sent by the

Empire to deal with the supposed current unrest among the

barbarians. Led by Colonel Joll they take control over the

Gravlund 12

settlement, leaving the Magistrate in an impotent, secondary

position. From here he must cooperate in an operation he does not

believe is righteous, and must silently – or mildly questioning –

observe captured barbarians suffer degradation and torture.

Eventually, he takes a young barbarian woman off the streets and

into his home. She has been tortured, leaving her nearly blind and

with a severe limp. In her, the Magistrate attempts to find a way

to understand the nature of the violence she has experienced, and

simultaneously he tries to formulate a position for himself; or,

in other words: he is renegotiating his perception of himself-in-

the-world, his 'life-lie'.

3. 1 The Arrival, or Introduction of Doubt

Initially, the Magistrate acts according to the formal

hierarchy imposed by the Empire. He expresses a spontaneous wish

to make a good impression on Colonel Joll, whom rumor claims to be

an important man. The sudden presence of a dignitary from the

capital appears somewhat overwhelming to the Magistrate. He has

not visited the capital since his youth and his entire conception

of it, and the Empire, is based on vague memories and “gossip

[...] long out of date” (2). This combined with the obscurity of

Gravlund 13

Colonel Joll's communication concerning his mission indicates the

almost mythical dimension sustaining the Empire's rule in this far

off settlement: its confirmation of authority through abstract

conceptions.

The very first paragraph (1) relates a clear symbolic instance

to this regard: the Magistrate's fascination with Colonel Joll's

dark sunglasses. They carry a symbolic significance in at least

two respects. First, they represent development and progression

alien to this remote, rural outpost; in other words, the distance

between city and country, or centre and periphery. Second, the

darkness of the glass disks also displays the Colonel's refusal to

reveal his intentions and thus remain strange to the Magistrate,

for whom the obscurity of the disks represent a locus of hidden

meaning.

The discrepancy between the Empire's conceptions and the

Magistrate's experience is almost instantly manifested to the

latter. Colonel Joll's visit coincides, incidentally, with a rare

taking of prisoners in the wake of a barbarian raid nearby the

settlement. Nothing indicates that the captives, an old man and a

sick boy, should have anything to do with the incident. The

Magistrate explains to Joll that the raid is insignificant, a

Gravlund 14

sporadic aggression very seldom displayed and then reciprocated in

a similar manner. He attempts to point to a relatively stable

balance between two parts, the settlement and the barbarians. The

Colonel, on the other hand, works according to a different logic –

which will be referred to as 'the logic of the Empire'. This means

that his reasons are gathered from protocol and applied, rather

blindly, to reality. He has a mission and will leave no stone

unturned, since, as we shall see, the overturning of stones is the

underlying point of his enterprise. The campaign against the

barbarians is in fact paradoxical; it is a war against a shadow,

projected by the Empire's need of a threat to sustain its

position. Consequently, the Magistrate's thinly veiled plead for

the prisoners is ignored and Joll interrogates them by means of

torture. It seems an exaggerated gesture, but procedure overrules

the plead of common sense; abstract logic defeats the testimony of

empirical reason.

The central conflict of the narrative is thus already

established and the Magistrate's growing alienation is brought to

light. He belongs to the Empire only by his title. This is a

predicament, however, that is not so simply resolved. He is caught

in a discrepancy meaning that the practical reasoning of his

Gravlund 15

present experiences cannot be resolved with the concepts of his

cultural background, derived from the representations of the

Empire. This is a split that will enable his identity crisis to

occur and question the very constitution on which he has relied.

3. 2. Torture and the Question of Responsibility

During the interrogations the Magistrate at first hides behind

his position; his subordinate relation to Joll liberates him from

the duty of questioning the Colonel's actions. However, this does

not last. When the old man is killed the Magistrate realizes that

he cannot sustain an emotional distance, but instinctively reacts

against the inhuman treatment of prisoners that Joll introduces.

Even so, the Magistrate reveals an almost curious perplexity

regarding the concept of torture. He cannot isolate it as a simple

means, but categorizes it as beyond the ethical; a leap, if you

will, into the realms of evil. He wonders how Joll can combine

torture with the normal society of others, imagining a “private

ritual of purification”, and implicitly relating it to the

question of desire by trying to picture the torturer's “first

time” (13). However, this “questioning insists the torturer's role

is incomprehensible” (Head, 51), and his insistence is problematic

Gravlund 16

since it demonizes torture by refusing to accept it as a human

activity, thus turning it into an 'other' opposed to the 'ideal'.

The fascination with torture becomes another central point in

the narrative, forcing the Magistrate to scrutinize the

significance of his own behavior, of desire and pain. But at this

point the Magistrate has not yet reached the point of examining

his own position. He pleads with the captured boy to give away

whatever information is required, but torture has rendered the

child either apathetic or all too suspicious. The Magistrate has

not yet realized that 'truth' has nothing to do with the

procedure. He has not understood that the Colonel's actions are

not primarily directed against the barbarians, but against the

people of the settlement: a manifestation of the power of the

imperial order.

Colonel Joll's methods finally supply him with a suitable

truth, enabling him to carry on the campaign as planned. It is of

course a staged confession, not of truth, but of authority; the

boy becomes a tool in the repetition of the ideological truth of

the Empire. This conformity becomes obvious in Joll's explanation

of how he knows when the prisoner is telling the truth – that a

certain tone enters the prisoner's voice. This approach reduces

Gravlund 17

“all inflection to the single tone of pain/truth” (Head, 52), and

reflects the threat of difference to the Empire's repetition of

the same, the conformity of the colonizer. Regardless of the

acquired 'truth' the Magistrate attempts to dissuade Joll from

raiding the barbarians, but again he fails to match the truth of

protocol. The principle governs reality, since in a state of

oppression the principal is the representation of truth. What

matters is not empirical facts, but which approach best serves the

discourse of the present order.7 Here, the simple image of a

soldier mimicking his leader's use of sunglasses represents the

acceptance of the offered truth.

Nevertheless, the Magistrate has his doubts concerning the

Empire's real intentions. He has not seen any signs of the

barbarian unrest that would justify a campaign against them. Also,

he notes that the threat seems to appear once every generation,

fueling the mythical fear amongst the people: “There is no woman

living along the frontier who has not dreamed of a dark barbarian

hand coming from under the bed to grip her ankle, no man who has

not frightened himself with visions of the barbarians carousing

his home.... raping his daughters” (9) But he is not convinced.

7 “Discourse” is here to be understood in the rather Foucauldian sense as the representational expression of a certain hegemony, in this case the ideological power structure of the Empire.

Gravlund 18

“Show me a barbarian army and I shall believe” (9) He wonders why

he should involve himself in this, instead of simply letting the

Colonel carry out his duty without any questions regarding the

meaning of “the word investigations” (9)8.

During his reflections concerning the possibility of escaping

involvement, the image appears of a reluctant man of resistance.

He realizes that his modest wish to end his days in this sleepy

oasis has been denied. We can note how his ideas of what he ought

to have done – left the settlement, gone hunting, fishing, closing

his eyes – represent the conception of precisely how one passively

contributes to the violent protection of an order9. This he has

been able to do while the Empire was distant, but now he is caught

up in the repetition of barbarian unrest as a recurrence of an

external threat which collides with his idea of morality and

responsibility. His problem, however, is to define this idea in a

manner that departs from a repetition of the dichotomous logic of

the Empire.

8 The comment regarding the meaning of “investigation” indicates the importanceof ambiguity of language/meaning which is central to the narrative.

9 This would be an important point of departure in a analysis of the role of the liberal humanist intellectual in an authoritative system.

Gravlund 19

3. 3. Interpretations of Signs

The Magistrate is no stranger to the arbitrariness of signs.

During Joll's absence, the Magistrate attempts to resume life as

it were and we are introduced to one of his hobbies: amateur

archeology. For years he has been excavating the ruins of

buildings from long ago that have been discovered in the dunes

outside the settlement. The basic structure is all that remains;

to what use the buildings have been put the Magistrate has no

idea. Among the ruins he has also found a bag full of small poplar

slips on which characters of an unknown language is painted. Their

meaning is long lost, but the Magistrate has spent much time

unsuccessfully attempting to interpret any level of significance.

It appears to be a diversion, a peaceful reflection on the

traditions and ways of old; an attempt to establish meaning in the

void left from lack of civilized pastime. In short: the

interpretative purpose of creating meaning where there is none

obvious. The implications are, however, important.

First, it represents how signs are arbitrary primarily in

relation to their potential meaning. Once one or another meaning has

been established, the sign has been included in a discourse – that

is, the context in which the interpretation was set. In other

Gravlund 20

words: the signs do not mean anything in themselves, but reveal

something about the context in which they are categorized.

Second, it relates the Magistrate to a certain cultural

practice that stands in direct relation to the representations of

the Empire and its civilizatory ideals. In other words, he

practices a cultural perspective seeking to establish coherence

and signification according to the idea of its own history: the

imperial discourse. The Magistrate, as we shall see, is certainly

not unaware of the problematic relation between his culture and

his ethics.

Although at this point he is vaguely aware of certain

contradictions he remains bewildered by the facts of history about

which he can only speculate, and of which the slips represent a

futile but yet present possibility to knowledge. The Magistrate is

torn between an idealization of the cyclical worldview of the

barbarians, and the historical time of the Empire which he himself

cannot escape. The interpretative problem, then, is to uncover the

cyclical recurrences of events and incorporating them into the

historical practice of categorization and progression:

Perhaps ten feet below the floor lie the ruins of another fort,razed by the barbarians [...] Perhaps when I stand on the floor ofthe courthouse, if that is what it is, I stand over the head of amagistrate like myself, another grey-haired servant of the Empire

Gravlund 21

who fell in the arena of his authority, face to face at last withthe barbarian. How will I ever know? (16)

He does not, however, reflect to what point. Instead he adds:

“Will the characters on the slips one day tell me?” (16)

Regardless of the private reason he has for seeking this

knowledge, he affirms the Empire's perspective by repeating it.

Hence, we can begin to suspect that what the Magistrate reacts

against in the methods of Colonel Joll is partly a resentment

towards his own self: the vague, readily suppressed suspicion of

complicity.

3. 4. Affirmation of Otherness

In the midst of the Magistrate's attempt to resume the

previous order of things in the settlement soldiers appear with a

number of prisoners. He objects: “These are fishing people, how

can you bring them back here?” (18) In response he is handed a

document from Joll describing how to handle the captives until he

returns. The document carries the seal of the Empire, underlining

the authority of the request. Worth noting here is how the

Magistrate assigns importance to the seal itself, indicating the

significance it carries as a symbol: “Beneath the signature the

Gravlund 22

seal is repeated, the seal of the Bureau which he [Joll] has

carried with him into the desert and which, if he perished, I

would doubtless have to send out a second expedition to recover”

(18). It becomes obvious, in the implied power generated by this

seal, how both Joll and himself are vehicles of the Empire,

subjects of its command and a realization of its idea, repeated in

their different bodies. Hence the abstract logic of the Empire is

repeated in a manner that protrudes through the Magistrate's

(empirical) experience of reality. Later, the Magistrate's attempt

to affirm this position by separating fisherfolk from nomads, is

contradicted by Joll's declaration that “prisoners are prisoners”

(23). This suggests how meaning is provided from elsewhere and

'poured' into a sign prepared for this purpose: to repeat the

same.

The arrival of prisoners stimulates reactions amongst the

people in the settlement towards strangers, turning them into

'others'. Initially, the townsfolk peacefully and curiously

observe through the gates of the barracks yard the newcomers'

rather quick adaption to life in captivity. But after an incident

with a soldier being attacked by the prisoners after harassing one

of their women, the attention turns into resentment. The

Gravlund 23

transition is imminent: as soon as the barbarians express a level

of independence, stating a degree of integrity, they are suddenly

construed as savages in the eyes of the townsfolk, who

uncritically repeat the prejudices latent in their culturally

inherited conception of the barbarian. Thus appears the

performativity in naming an enemy: any hostility, regardless if it

is justified or not, confirms the negative status according to a

circular logic. Another way to consider this is terms of equality,

or hierarchy: the superior can afford to be sympathetic as long as

the hierarchal structure remains intact, but turns defensive as

soon as the subjugated affirms its position as an individual

subject, thus threatening the given categories.

Consequently, no one really questions the treatment of the

prisoners. Instead, the treatment Joll subjects them to seems to

work as a manifestation of the gravity of the barbarian threat. If

conducted on the innocent these methods would be pointless and

cruel, thus, with a weak but effective syllogism, must the

prisoners be guilty. This will be the dominant opinion for at

least two reasons: first, the status as enemies has been prepared

by the naming of the other as enemy, and confirmed by the act of

torture; second, this process also discourages opposition through

Gravlund 24

fear, as it reveals how easily one can become the object of its

force, according to the simple dichotomy of either friend or foe.

It is this opposition that the Magistrate will attempt to

challenge.

However, he, too, has trouble resisting the affirmation of

cultural superiority and distance with relation to the captives:

“Their habits are frank and filthy” (20) and they refuse to use

the spade given to them for burying their waste (that is, refusing

to abide by the settlement's culture). But the real issue is how

this can lead to a justified domination of the other? The moral

system that the Magistrate appears to adhere to does not demand

the sympathy of the other, but rather scrutinizes the actions of

the self. Accordingly, the Magistrate does not give in to his

involuntary feelings of contempt of the other but remains focused

on his own – and Joll's - actions.

Since his ethical focus remains primarily on the acts

committed, not the objects affected, his repeated attempt to

embrace the lure of oblivion fails. Seeking refuge in the arms of

his regular, young prostitute he experiences such nightmares that

he unconsciously kicks her out of the bed; an almost too obvious

expression of his helplessness. Hence, he cannot accept the

Gravlund 25

unjustified acts of torture – as an expression of human behavior

as such – and observes that “once one has been infected [by

knowledge] there seem to be no recovery” (23). Further, continuing

the metaphor of illness, the Magistrate experiences a physical

reaction as a consequence of his courteous behavior vis-a-vi the

Colonel, now returned to the capital to report of his results:

“All my life I have believed in civilized behaviour; on this

occasion, however, I cannot deny it, the memory leaves me sick

with myself” (25). “Infected”, “no recovery”, “sick”, all describe

his feelings regarding the Colonel. Of course we know that Joll is

only a representation of the Empire, as is the Magistrate. What we

have, then, is a repetition of the Empire's cultural ideals along

with the context of its practices, and from this follows a

paradoxical experience. This is what the Magistrate's sense of

illness signifies.

3. 5. The Girl and the Split Self

When Colonel Joll returns to the capital and the group of

captives are to be released, the Magistrate observes that from a

certain point of view it would be best to march these people out

into the desert and kill and bury them; to eradicate this shameful

Gravlund 26

episode and start anew with a blank page of “new intentions, new

resolutions” (26). In this he recognizes the progressive oblivion

of people like Joll, the “new men of the Empire” (26). But he, the

Magistrate, cannot accept a history that does not acknowledge its

past's influence on the present. He treats the released prisoners

as well as is possible and orders that they be restored to their

former lives. What is curious is that he does not really know why

he acts accordingly, only that he hopes it will be revealed to him

in time.

The Magistrate thus acts without understanding the

constitution, or origin, of his ethical position. It is certainly

reminiscent of a leap of faith in that he actually has questioned

its given primacy, but still prefers it to another alternative. He

knows torture is wrong, but since he does not understand its nature

he cannot formulate his resistance properly beyond his former

ideals. This, supposedly, is one reason that he invites a tortured

barbarian girl, who has been left behind, from the streets into

his home. In her broken wrists, her blinded eyes and her mental

scars he hopes to find the answers to why both he and Joll are

acting like they do, and in rubbing her body in oil and washing

her feet he displays a wish to repent. Still, again the act is

Gravlund 27

directed rather to his own moral conscience as he does not expect

the girl to supply any forgiveness. In the narrative, then, she

functions as a symbolic reminder, a trace of what has happened,

and the Magistrate relies on his speculative interpretational

method to supply him with the truth – a synthesis to the inner

dialectical opposition he has found within the Empire.

Although he has trouble finding answers, he does come to one

critical realization as he observes himself through the eyes of

the girl: “The distance between myself and her torturers, I

realize, is negligible; I shudder” (29). He is suddenly aware of

the relation between physical and structural oppression and how it

is repeated in different forms. Hence, he understands how it does

not matter what he offers the girl: she will see through all his

variations and observe “the same man” (37). She is aware of the

underlying notion of their (power) relation. Still, he comforts

himself with the thought that she is still better off with him

than on the street; that is, the false comfort of charity, the

supplement for real change, which allows him to keep using the

girl for his own purposes: "It has been growing more and more

clear to me that until the marks of this girl's body are

deciphered and understood I cannot let go of her" (33).

Gravlund 28

It can be noted how the girl resonates with the Magistrate's

interpretational attitude similarly to the poplar slips: they are

means for his wish to restore a sense of purpose and order. They

function as polysemous symbols – ambiguous points of departure for

this imagination's ambition to establish an understanding of its

context. But simultaneously they function as deferrals to this

ambition by their very ambiguity. Thus these symbols are both

possibilities and impossibilities, providing both answers and

questions simultaneously, as they stimulate the imagination's

continuous movements according to the concept of repetition.

The apparent reason to why the girl functions so well as a

symbol is her opacity, her unwillingness to communicate her

experiences of torture. Later when she does relate about it the

only consequence is that she becomes a less powerful locus of

meaning. The Magistrate can project his own sentiments upon her

only as long as he is ignorant of her experience. He wishes to

fire up anger in her, hatred towards her torturers. This appears,

however, to be nothing but supplements for his own frustration; he

cannot assume her position and applies his own conceptualizations

on her imagined experiences. Again the lacking turns into an empty

sign, open to the whims of his imagination.

Gravlund 29

However, this is not a zero sum game: his projections reflect

back on himself and generate degrees of change in his conceptions

and sentiments. This becomes obvious as the Magistrate repeats

former pastime pursuits. One morning as he goes hunting he

observes that it is not important for him to kill the waterbuck he

has spotted and is struck by an uncanny feeling:

[W]e gaze at each other […] I find an obscure sentiment lurking atthe edge of my consciousness. With the buck before me suspended inimmobility, there seems to be time for all things, time even to turnmy gaze inward and see what it is that has robbed the hunt of itssavour: the sense that this has become no longer a morning's huntbut an occasion on which either the proud ram bleeds to death on theice or the old hunter misses his aim; that for the duration of thisfrozen moment the stars are locked in a configuration in which eventsare not themselves but stand for other things (42-43, my emphasis).

What he experiences is a crack in the fundaments of his life-

lie, his self, as the repetition of the concept of hunting

suddenly changes significance. As his conceptions are being re-

negotiated certain representations, priorly associated to his given

cultural position, lose their former meaning. In meeting the gaze

of the wild buck he suddenly experiences that the relation is

deprived its given hierarchy. What has before been part of a

common cultural order – here, the concept of hunting – has now

broken free from the subjugated association within his context and

instead adapted a representation of otherness similar to the

Gravlund 30

barbarian girl; a relation undermining the stability of his own

position as he can longer longer categorize it properly.

Consequently, he tells the girl: "Never before have I had the

feeling of not living my own life on my own terms" (43), finding

his self being estranged by his disturbing experience. Ironically,

this is a description of her present situation, lived on his terms.

In other words he has partly assumed her perspective as the

stability of his conceptions is compromised and the structure of

the Empire's discourse of power is revealed. The illusion of a

coherent identity has thus been challenged and the Magistrate

reflects that "I am the same man I always was; but time has

broken, something has fallen in upon me from the sky, from

nowhere" (47). Not from nowhere, but from the past representations

being unable to give meaning to events unfolding in the present;

from old representations and concepts being unable to capture the

anomaly of the girl: the locus of ambiguity.

3. 6. Re-affirmation of the Past

The Magistrate gradually begins to doubt his enterprise with

the girl. He suffers from the analogy between himself and the

torturer, both seeking answers from her only with different means.

Gravlund 31

He observes that he behaves like a lover, but "might equally tie

her to a chair and beat her, it would be no less intimate" (46).

The lack of communication leads him to depraved thoughts of being

unable to penetrate her depths as deeply as Joll has managed, that

nothing can move her after that experience. Still, this is an

image he cannot accept and thus revolts against by

counterproductively asserting the old representations and

dismissing the entire process: "I shake my head in a fury of

disbelief […] it is I who am seducing myself, out of vanity, into

these meanings and correspondences […] I search for secrets and

answers, no matter how bizarre, like an old woman reading tea-

leaves. There is nothing to link me with torturers […] How can I

believe that a bed is anything but a bed, a woman's body anything

but a site of joy?” (48)

To assert his re-affirmation of his former self he begins

visiting the young prostitute again, attempting to retrieve the

past through repetition. She has previously been the vehicle of

reawakened desire, as it were, during an earlier 'crisis' when he

was losing the virility of his youth. Considering this, the

repetitive aspect of his gesture becomes quite evident. She was

once recommended to him by a friend who claimed she was dedicated

Gravlund 32

to her “'playacting'”, believing “'in the role she plays'” (49).

This is precisely what the Magistrate no longer is able to do. On

some level he realizes that this repetition of desire is an empty

gesture, a futile resistance to the complexity he has uncovered in

the darkness symbolized by the barbarian girl. He revolts against

his own alteration by trying to distance himself from the

barbarian girl, to obliterate her from his mind. It all reflects

an unwillingness to let go of his life-lie, clinging on to it out

of fear of the unknown. And if he cannot resume the old, perhaps

he can eradicate the new? To quote the Magistrate himself: “No! No!

No!” (47)

The confusion is put to an end by the recurrence of the

imperial logic through the arrival of Joll's avant-garde,

represented by a young officer and his conscripts. The Magistrate

dines with the officer and reminisces about old times in the

capital. All goes well until the officer mentions a rumor that

there is going to be a general offensive against the barbarians.

The Magistrate replies that it must be just a rumor. The

barbarians are nomads, he explains, they will not let themselves

be pushed back into mountains. He feels a barrier descend between

himself and the officer. “[B]etween the military and the civilian”

Gravlund 33

(54), he thinks, but the more obvious line appears to be drawn

between someone who questions the Empire and one who does not. To

widen the gap, the Magistrate goes on to lecture about how the

barbarians are unjustly treated out of contempt “founded on

nothing more substantial than difference in table manners,

variations in the structure of the eyelid […] I sometimes wish

these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we

would learn to respect them” (55). Either way, he relates that the

barbarians consider the settlement a transience, something that

will pass and everything will be restored as it was. In other

words, the same form of repetition the Magistrate is trying to

affirm: that difference is only a slight variation of what will

once again resume to being the same as before; difference is

transient, the same is consistent.

However, the officer contradicts the Magistrate's prediction

by explaining that the Empire will not leave, no matter what. It

will support its settlements at any cost to uphold the protection

of its borders. The rigidity of the officer's position, the logic

of the Empire, makes the Magistrate weary with his own opinions.

Does he really want the barbarians to invade the settlement? Would

they commit the same cultural interest to his remains as he does

Gravlund 34

to theirs? The Magistrate makes the mistake of associating his

resistance to some form of sympathy for the barbarian way of life,

which distances him from them. Instead the situation is rather

similar to his rejection of Joll's methods: it is the Empire's

lack of tolerance and empathy that he resists. It is this

automated discourse of power that motivates him, not any cultural

kinship to the barbarians. What he affirms, then, is neither

Empire nor barbarian, but the view of difference, not as a threat

but as a simple variation. But ironically, fooled by this very

difference in culture between him and the barbarians, he fails to

understand his own position properly.

3. 7. In Opposition, or Becoming an Other

Since he has not been able to gain coherent meaning from the

girl, he decides to bring the girl back to her own people. On the

journey back he reflects on their differences and is surprised to

have loved someone so strange to him (thus mistaking their

intimacy for love). Now he again longs for the well-known, to rest

and quietly spend his days in peace. Instead the army awaits him

at the city square, ready to go to war against the barbarians.

According to the dichotomous imperial logic he is treated as a

Gravlund 35

traitor who has collaborated with the enemy. His explanations are

useless: in times of war there is no room for subjective

variation, only collective affirmation. He is imprisoned in the

same room where the girl was tortured, which indicates the result

of him returning the girl: he has internalized the idea of her and

has himself become an 'other' in relation to the Empire. To the

Magistrate, this embracing of singularity generates a sense of

freedom; he is, if not heroic, true – but to what is unclear.

In the cell the Magistrate tries to reenact in his mind the

proceedings during which the girl was tortured and bereft part of

her humanity. But instead, gradually, he himself is stripped of

the means to affirm his own identity. In the beginning he tries to

make sense of the specks he observes on the wall, reflecting his

need to formulate meaning, but is soon reduced through the

numerous petty humiliations he must suffer to “a pile of blood,

bone and meat that is unhappy” (93). He has assumed the position

of an enemy; transformed from an observing to an active position,

from passivity to action, from an interpreter to a symbol. But a

symbol of what? The most important reason for his identity's

dissolution is the lack of response from those holding him

captive. He is ignored and cannot express his oppositional

Gravlund 36

singularity, and hence the more humiliated, being treated not as

an other, but as a 'nothing'.

His state of disgrace, then, takes two forms: first on a

societal level, where he is estranged and rejected due to his

unwillingness to embrace the current order; second, on a personal,

human level, where he has lost his dignity by being deprived

significance. In other words, lack of recognition on the first

level causes the second level to occur. So, when he manages to

escape it is rather because he is desperate for human contact than

anything else. The vagueness of his ambitions cannot match the

deterioration of his body and mind: “I walked into that cell a

sane man sure of the rightness of my cause, however incompetent I

continue to find myself to describe what that cause may be; but

after two months among the cockroaches with nothing to see but

four walls and an enigmatic soot-mark, nothing to smell but my own

body, no one to talk to but a ghost is a dream whose lips seem to

be sealed, I am much less sure of myself” (104, my emphasis). Again, there

is a double meaning here: the sureness of his-self regards,

literally, the cause of his opposition, but this uncertainty rests

on a deeper lack of stability of the self. He does not really know

who he is becoming, and even more importantly: why?

Gravlund 37

3. 8. The Issue of Ethics

Colonel Joll soon returns with his army and a number of

barbarian prisoners, degradingly tied together by a metal wire

penetrating their cheeks and distracting them from everything but

having their faces ripped open by a careless movement. The

Magistrate slips out of his cell to witness this and in reaction

to the cruelty utters: “I cannot save the prisoners, therefore let

me save myself” (114). Spontaneously, this is a literal wish to

escape harm, but soon it is turned to another level of redemption.

He sees an opportunity to affirm his position, make it meaningful

despite his doubts regarding its origin, and resume belief in

himself. The Colonel writes “Enemy” with charcoal on the backs of

the prisoners, and in an allegorical travesty of how the Empire's

naming of its enemies justifies violent actions the letters are

erased by whipping10. Furthering the act, a young girl from the

'audience' is called up to join in the beating, symbolizing, as it

were, how the people are made into accomplices. Remaining within

his own cultural perspective, the Magistrate rather reacts against

10 The writing on the backs of the barbarian prisoners alludes to Kafka's In the Penal Colony where “inscription and execution are conjoined in a deluded notion of justice.” Cambridge, 50.

Gravlund 38

the depravation of his people than to the treatment of the

prisoners. As before his struggle is primarily about the moral

implications of our actions as such. He steps forward and tries to

speak his mind, declares the prisoners “miracles of creation”

(117), but is brutally beaten down. But by acting in public his

status is confirmed on a societal level, and manifested through

the very marks inflicted by the soldiers on his body. Pain, as has

been mentioned, urges meaning to be established; his wounds

confirm his conviction, or even constitute it.

However, what happens is not that the Magistrate resumes any

certainty regarding his position. Instead he finds himself

questioning its implications, contemplating the possibility to

assume any position above another. “It occurs to me,“ he reflects

afterwards, “that we crush insects beneath our feet, miracles of

creation too” (118). Indirectly he is formulating the limits of

any morality: that it must always be excluding on more or less

arbitrary ground. Violence, as a single act, changes meaning

dependent on whom it is repeated. 'Miracles of creation' is thus

an inadequate representation as it pleads to universality. There

are always complications with stating a moral conviction: he, too,

represents a certain position of which he cannot be completely

Gravlund 39

sure; an axiom deprived of divinity and thus never fully

waterproof to counter arguments. Hence, it is easier to just utter

the word “no!” (118) than to demand justice, so difficult to

realize, as becomes obvious regarding his doubts concerning his

lacking personal sympathies for the barbarian culture. Therefore

he realizes that he was better off silenced by violence – a martyr

rather than an orator – since marks on a body are a purer

signification than words within the discourse, because words

express the discourse while the marks on one's body evoke

signification beyond the constrictions of language and ideology.

Thus, he touches on the insight that his 'leap of faith' cannot be

defined by language.

Nevertheless, by virtue of his actions, rather than his

reflections, the Magistrate continuously plays the part of the

rebel. Soon he is brought before Joll to explain the occurrence of

the slips found amongst the Magistrate's possessions and which are

suspected to be proof of his communication with the enemy. Instead

of the real explanation he pretends to interpret the characters

and offers fragments from a fictitious war between the Empire,

“the old Empire, I mean” (124), and the barbarians where the

former are the aggressors, quite obviously alluding to the current

Gravlund 40

situation11. He can thus criticize the Empire without saying it out

loud. However, allegory as a form is not recognized by the

imperial logic, since they do not deal with ambiguities and

interpretations. The Colonel dismisses the slips as some sort of

simple game sticks, and goes on to inform the Magistrate of his

unpopularity in the settlement – he lacks advocates and his

gestures are conceived of as ridiculous. Joll tries to undermine

the recognition the Magistrate assumed from his resistance by

stating it as a joke of little importance. However, the Magistrate

is aware that he has nothing to gain from cooperating, regardless

of the truth in the Colonel's claim: either he would confirm the

stupidity related by Joll, or else fall for a trick rendering all

his resistance meaningless. Instead he retreats to his anger, a

vehicle for a repetition of his leap of faith, and manages to

complete the transition to otherness. From a position in limbo he

thus resists the lure of complicity and is 'rewarded' by the real

mark of the enemy: torture.

During the course of his bodily suffering he learns why the

girl could not communicate her experiences to him: torture is the

ultimate negation of singularity, of language. They are not

11 This is of course an example of a meta-narrative, as it coincides with what Coetzee is doing in writing this allegorical novel during apartheid in South Africa.

Gravlund 41

interested in what he has to say, to confess, but only wish to

teach him “what it meant to live in a body, as a body, a body

which can entertain notions of justice only as long as it is whole

and well” (126). The Magistrate sinks beneath any notions of

disgrace and shame as the body strives to escape pain, oblivious

to any meaningful relation to normal society and its ways: a cast

away. During a fake hanging he is finally reduced to a single

point: survival. Nothing else is important or even present.

However, despite his desperate state there is still a confounded

glimpse in him which grasps for rationality, an explanation to how

someone can exercise torture and still remain human. Only when the

rope tightens around his neck does all else wither away. In other

words, as long as there is life he fumbles for answers.

3. 9. Re-formation of an Unstable Self

The torture has been 'successful', and its grand finale leaves

the Magistrate deprived of all conceptions of resistance, too

distracted by the laborious work of his body's recovery. He has

lost his sense of righteousness and ceased to define himself as an

oppositional force in relation to the Empire. He has thus finally

managed to break out of the dichotomous logic of the Empire and

Gravlund 42

subject himself to the ambiguities that have pressed upon him.

Humbled, he begins to see how he himself has acted as an

expression of the Empire; how he was disgusted by the thought of

being a part of what Joll represented, and was unable to see that

his 'courting' of the girl was a futile attempt, similar in spirit

to Joll's torture, to access her in order to find a point where he

could depart from the Colonel's position. Instead he repeated it,

only in a different form. He realizes that the only way he could

have reached her was to break the pattern; to discover a different

approach which excluded Joll from the equation, a gesture of

originality instead of imitation.

He and Joll, he reflects, are merely “two sides of imperial

rule” (148); he a lie for the easy times, the Colonel a truth when

times are harsh. They are both parts in a hegemonic order which

functions as much through acts of welfare as of violence to

complete its purpose of remaining in power. Their opposition is

thus an illusion; the Magistrate represents an Empire which is a

'paradise', but which needs to abandon its ideals in the face of

external threats, reminding the people of the significance of the

Empire: the fundamental guarantor for their happiness and the

protector of civilization. These two sides motivate each other and

Gravlund 43

cannot do without the other, which makes the Magistrate's wish to

resume life as it was a part of the cycle. This fragile balance is

the Empire's weakness and burden, but also the premiss of it

existence. In other words, what the Magistrate uncovers is the

workings of the imperial logic, its discourse within which he too

has, despite everything, been an accomplice.

The army returns after the last general offensive with a

lesson to the Magistrate how he should have acted. They have been

defeated by the barbarians for the simple reason that the

barbarians refused to fight on their aggressors' terms and fought

instead according to their own means: a David's strategy versus a

Goliath. In other words, the barbarians acted outside the imperial

discourse and thus managed to resist it, and then reveal its lies

by not fulfilling the false prophecy of the barbarian agenda which

motivated the army's offensive in the first place. The Magistrate,

on the other hand, only managed to criticize the Empire within its

own discourse and thus strengthening it by acting according to its

oppositional logic.

The army finally leaves the settlement and the Magistrate is

left in confusion. Deprived the cultural notion of the Empire he

does not know what to think, who to be or what to do; his

Gravlund 44

conceptions are tainted, yet does he command his conceptions well

enough to reformulate them properly? Or rather: does he understand

how to do it, that is, have a grasp of what the alternative

signifies? His status as a representation of identity deprived of

content is symbolized by him suffering from an unwanted erection

that has nothing to do with desire: a sign without proper

signification, a riddle, a nuisance.

He attempts to write about the settlement and the events that

have been unfolding, but they resist re-telling. He realizes he

cannot communicate anything meaningful, since he is only repeating

the very representations he has struggled with during the entire

narrative. He is in a position where the old has lost its meaning

while the new has not yet restored it. So, instead of writing, the

Magistrate properly prepares the conservation of the poplar slips,

which he deems a more reliable clue to history than his own

narrative (Kossew, 94). He cannot, or is afraid he cannot,

distance his narrative from rigidity of the imperial ideology,

thus reproducing it, while the slips still have their 'innocent'

interpretative potential intact.

The narrative ends with a realization of an image that has

been recurring in the Magistrate's dream: children playing in the

Gravlund 45

snow. It seems to indicate some form of beginning, but the meaning

is as lost on him as the significance of his own dreams. He is

left confounded, as is the reader; left with questions without

answers and speculations deprived of substance.

4. The Magistrate's Failure to Affirm Repetition as Difference

Let me first repeat Sören Kierkegaard's notion of repetition

as ”the moment [when] the present self is confronted with the past

self, and the individual must recognize himself […] [R]epetition

mark[s] the failure to come to terms with one’s past” (Nymann

Eriksen, 22). Hopefully it has been made obvious that this

movement has been involved as the Magistrate was forced to

question the fundaments of his identity and to confront what I

have been calling his life-lie: his reliance on a false notion of

stable representations. This questioning arose as he experienced a

discrepancy, or contradiction within the Empire: he realized that

the cultural representations upon which his identity was

constituted rested on a notion of ideology and violence that was

incompatible with his sense of justice, even his conception of

humanity. But as his very identity, his language, was impregnated

by this ideology he could not find a way to formulate his critique

Gravlund 46

in a coherent manner. He was thrown into a state of doubt and

confusion in which he could not find his footing. Only in his

resistance as an other with regards to the Empire could he find a

position to relate to. However, this, too, was a chimeric

stability since it was a repetition of the very dichotomous notion

of the world that the Empire practiced in their creation of a

barbarian threat as a negative alternative. The idealization of an

archaic view on history as harmonic and cyclical was a fallacy as

it is only another version of the imperial repetition of the same,

and also a reversion of the concept of repetition as difference

that he has experienced. Only through the bodily pain of torture

was the Magistrate brought beyond this dichotomy to a place where

the false implications of his life-lie were fully revealed.

The structure of this process can be further explained by

categorizing the imperial logic as analogical to the Christeo-

Judean linear conceptualization of time. This reveals a constant

repetition of the same through a reproduction of an origin, only

here God has been replaced by Empire. Either way it is an

ideological structure that attempts to perpetuate the conception

of reality as dichotomous, favoring the origin as the positive

force and thus logically rendering opposition negative. This

Gravlund 47

reflects how the repetition of a concept creates a regime, where

the repetition of a particular is said to be revealing a

corresponding universal principle (Clymer, 3-4).

As the Magistrate senses the invalidity of this opposition the

repetition of the same can no longer be sustained to his mind; a

realization of repetition as difference has been indicated.

However, he first attempts to escape this frightening notion of

fundamental contingency, thus forestalling ambiguity by resorting

to repeating other sources of apparent stability; these are, as

mentioned above, 'opposition' and 'idealization of the archaic'.

The first can be further exemplified by the Magistrate's inability

to grasp the act of torture as compatible with the definition of

humanity; thus he still imagines humanity as related to a

specific, universal moral which can be conclusively decided.

Instead this conception, too, is part of the same hegemonic

ideology that generates the violent behavior of the torturers.

This apparent contradiction is a key event in disrupting the

Magistrate's sense of stability. The other escape, idealizing the

barbarian's archaic conception of time is problematic for two

reasons: first, it is part of his opposition in becoming an

'other'; and second, it is analogous to the archaic conception of

Gravlund 48

time as a repetition of an identical same, eternally returning to

a beginning.

Neither of these escape routes are successful since they

cannot explain the split of self that the Magistrate has been

experiencing, for example during the hunting episode discussed

earlier and which is developed during his time as a prisoner. The

significance of the episode in the cell, on a narrative level, can

be understood as a reduction to 'blankness', a purgatorial

stripping of the self of rigid, failing representations in the

process of renegotiating identity. In this state everything is

questioned in an almost descartian expression of doubt, leaving as

certain only a basic humanity, and the Magistrate must struggle to

regain his footing. Now, this process captures how identity is

constituted through a number of assumptions regarding the world,

which are accepted or rejected depending on the resonance with the

experienced context in which the subject exists. This means that

our conceptions of the world are axiomatic – assumptions which we

live by – and as such naturally unstable and dependent on degrees

of conviction to function. In this context, a leap of faith is the

courage to embrace this ambiguity and act despite of it, while a

life-lie is the rejection of difference and an affirmation of the

Gravlund 49

universality of fixed conceptions and representations. The Empire

represents the latter state of unquestionable assurance, a

perspective which the Magistrate has departed from by virtue of

the Empire's inherent contradiction between its expressions of

culture (the Magistrate) and power (Colonel Joll); or in Marxist

terms: the base (civic society) does not seem to condition the

superstructure (political and legal institutions).

The Magistrate feels this, he experiences it in observing

himself through the eyes of the barbarian girl, and even

formulates the predicament in moral terms, but he cannot truly

accept the notion of his position as necessarily contingent. He

cannot refrain from seeking a conclusive meaning, a fundamental

reason that can explain his actions to himself. He has a sequence

of dreams that “represent the magistrate's/reader's desire for

clarification and the text's continual deferment of it” (Kossew,

94). In other words the dreams appear to, but do not, give hints

to an unconscious realm that will reveal some “opaque similarity”

which will associate his actions to a point he can rationalize.

This is the trace of imperial ideology that he fails to escape

during the narrative. Therefore does this feeling of uncertainty

remain with him to the very end. This lack of knowledge that he

Gravlund 50

cannot come to terms with is precisely the existential predicament

that lures us to attempt to universalize the world, to anchor our

conceptions in rigid conceptions of the world: in short, to

establish life-lies.

In the narrative, Coetzee unravels this rigidity, points to

its complexity and difficulty, but does not provide any way out

for neither the Magistrate nor the reader. And this is where the

leap of faith comes into play. However, in its secular version, as

there is no divinity to rely on, one must adopt a flexible mind.

In the context of this essay: to embrace the difference that

occurs in repetition, and to affirm the axiomatic status of the

conceptions on which one constitutes identity. This is not, I

believe, what the text means, but to my reading it is certainly

what it does. The effect that it communicates is, to me, the

necessity and difficulty of choosing; to believe in your choice

while simultaneously being prepared to abandon it if it cannot

stand the test of repetition and difference.

In the final sentence the Magistrate reflects that he feels

“like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road

that may lead nowhere” (170). Perhaps this state is a necessary

prerequisite in order to be able to formulate a more singular

Gravlund 51

axiom upon which to constitute a new identity? This is the meaning

of repetition: to lose your way and finding it again; to reaffirm

your self over and over as experience introduces new meaning over

time. Still, the Magistrate remains in an 'empty discourse' where

things have lost their meaning. He has managed to introduce

difference by a leap of faith beyond the universal, but continues

to fail to affirm this difference through repetition and thus

cannot reestablish his identity.

Gravlund 52

5. Works Cited

Attridge, David. "Against Allegory”. J. M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public

Intellectual. Ed. Poyner, Jane. Ohio University Press, 2006. 63-82.

Print.

Clymer, Lorna. “Introduction”. Ritual, Routine and Regime: Repetition in Early

Modern British and European Cultures. Ed. Clymer, Lorna. Toronto: U of

Toronto Press, 2006. Print.

Coetzee, J. M. Waiting for the Barbarians. London: Vintage, 2000. Print.

Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition.Trans. Paul Patton. London:

Continuum, 2004. Print.

---. Nietzsche och Filosofin. Trans. Johannes Flink. Göteborg: Daidalos,

2003. Print.

Dooley, Mark. The Politics of Exodus: Kierkegaard's Ethics of Responsibility. New

York: Fordham University Press, 2001. Print.

Eliade, Mircea. Myten om den Eviga Återkomsten: Arketyper och Upprepning.

Trans. Dan Shafran och Åke Nylinder. Ludvika: Dualis, 2002. Print.

Gendron, Sarah. Repetition, Difference and Knowledge In the Works of Samuel

Beckett, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.

Print.

Gravlund, Peder. "Upprepningen och det Autentiska: Som De

Framträder i Kierkegaards, Nietzsches och Camus Tänkande." BA

Gravlund 53

Thesis. University of Lund, 2005. Print.

Head, Dominic. The Cambridge Introduction to J. M. Coetzee. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.

Kierkegaard, Sören. Fear and Trembling. London: Penguin Classics,

1985. Print.

---. Upprepningen. Trans. Stefan Borg. Guldsmedshyttan: Nimrod,

1995. Print.

Kossew, Sue. Pen and Power: A Post-Colonial Reading of J.M. Coetzee and André Brink.

Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. Print.

Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of

Chicago, 1962. Print.

Miller, J. Hillis. Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels. Cambridge,

Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982. Print.

Mooney, Edward F. "Repetition: Getting the World Back". The

Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard. Ed. Hannay, Alastair and Marino,

Gordon D. Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998. Print.

Nyman Eriksen, Nils. Kierkegaard's Category of Repetition. Berlin: Walter de

Gruyter, 2000. Print.