J.M. Coetzee B.1940 South Africa Won Nobel Prize in

Literature, 2003 Waiting for the

Barbarians (1980) is the 3rd of 12 novels

Opponent of animal cruelty, has worked that into fiction

Three Simultaneous Phenomena in the Structure of Torture

From the book The Body in Pain

A theory about the social and political function of torture.

Part of a longer book that considers pain in various realms of society at different points in history. Moves discussion of pain outside of a medical realm and into social considerations, including its role in war.

Book inspired by so few descriptions of pain in literature.

3 parts

1) Experience of pain is subjective – “more emphatically real than any other human experience” – but cannot be sensed by other people.

2) Torture makes the subjectivity of pain objective (visible) through its operations (e.g. drowning torture).

3) The objectified pain is translated into “the insignia of power” (118)

Elements of pain in torture Aversive, a negation of the body Conflates private and public Obliterates consciousness - annihilation

of thought and emotion Ability to destroy language: “The

tendency of pain not simply to resist expression but to destroy the capacity for speech is in torture reenacted in overt, exaggerated form.”

Objectification Power

Visibility Surveillance Shift outside of

the body

Instruments of torture (pain and power)

Telephone, chair and walls

Relatives of the tortured

Questions

The translation to power

A. “Weapon is an object that goes into the body and produces pain.”

B. As something perceived in a torture scenario the weapon “lifts the pain out of the body and makes it visible”

C. The torture weapon allows “pain’s attributes” to be “broken off from the body and attached instead to the regime.” (118)

Scarry includes “sexuality” among the insignia of power

Photo fromAbu Ghraib

The Depositions “They stripped me of

all my clothes, even my underwear.” (168)

Kasim Mehaddi Hilas

“And after that they order me to sleep on my stomach and they ordered the other guy to sleep on top of me in the same position and the same way to all of us.” Hiadar Sabar Abed Miktub Al-Aboodi(171)

Sexuality as an instrument of abuse Allows for a disclaiming of the pain.

(Photos show people divorced from the pain experienced by the prisoners.)

The torturer: “He first inflicts pain, then objectifies

pain, then denies the pain.” (119)

Blindness as Power

“It is not merely that his power makes him blind, nor that his power is accompanied by blindness, nor even that his power requires blindness; it is, instead, quite simply that his blindness, his willed amorality, is his power, or a large part of it.” (119)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Qi8srR7co

Waiting for the BarbariansOpening paragraph:

“I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire. Is he blind?...”

How does the tension of seeing/not seeing and the inability to see emerge at various points in the novel?

How does that relate to the Magistrate’s attempt to comprehend events and his own life?

Magistrate

Narrator Functionary of the Empire Aging man

Questions: What is the effect of not giving us his

name? How does he describe himself at various

points in the book?

Service of the Empire PAGE 8

“I did not mean to get embroiled in this. I am a country magistrate.”

A quiet life in quiet times.

PAGE 12

“Looking at him I wonder how he felt the very first time…”

Pass without disquiet

Roman Magistrate

Officials of Rome Elected or appointed depending on point

in history Functioned during different periods of

Roman power (including the Republic and the Empire)

What is the point of this classical term?

An outpost of empire

Is there a name for the place?

How would you describe it?

What is the magistrate’s relationship to the outpost?

The post is in relation to…P. 12

“…f you get lost it becomes our task here to find you and bring you back to civilization.”

PAGE 8

“In the capital the concern was that the barbarian tribes of the north…”

Is it South Africa?Coetzee lived there until he moved to

Australia in 2002.

When the novel was published, South Africa still under apartheid rule.

Apartheid (“the state of being apart”) was enforced (legal) racial segregation.

Coetzee concerned about authoritarian rule and mistreatment of blacks.

Novel as allegory?

Characters and settings signify a correlated order of agents, events, concepts

Historical and political – identification of actors and events

Ideas/concepts – personification of abstract entities (virtue, vice)

Or is it an unnamed place?Could be

anywhere anytime

For all time?

Could be nowhere no time

Points to the difficulty of situating the narrative

From horizon to horizon

Dream sequence:

Page 9

“From horizon to horizon the earth is white with snow. It falls from a sky in which the source of light is diffuse and everywhere present, as though the sun had dissolved into mist, become an aura…”

Knowledge of the “barbarians”

PAGE 15

“The barbarians, who are pastoralists, nomads..”

PAGE 37

“There have been no barbarian visitors this year…”