Corporeality and Positionality in J.M. Coetzee's 'In the Heart of the Country' and Making America Great Again: Trump's Rhetoric of Nation-Building and American Exceptionalism
[Thesis]
Caitlin O'Hara
Schultheis Moore, Alexandra
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
2017
68
Committee members: Feather, Jennifer; Sanchez, Maria
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-0-355-07723-0
M.A.
College of Arts & Sciences: English
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
2017
"I am among other things a farmgirl living in the midst of the hurlyburly or such paltry hurlyburly as we have in the desert, not unaware that there is a hole between my legs that has never been filled, leading to another hole never filled either" (Coetzee 41). J.M. Coetzee writes In the Heart of the Country as the diary of his main character, Magda. She is a single, white, South African woman who lives at home with her father. My paper, "Corporeality and Positionality in J.M. Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country" explores Coetzee's descriptions of bodies, space, and place in the text. By grounding these descriptions in the historical role of white women in pastoral, apartheid-era South Africa, I demonstrate that Coetzee's descriptions of physical bodies and the actions they perform reflect their place in the colonial order and the spaces they are allowed to occupy. Through this reading, Magda's refusal to acknowledge the black servant characters as individuals despite her own criticism of the place and space she and other single, white women are allowed to inhabit becomes legible. This illuminates Coetzee's larger claims about the failure of the colonial project.