The Making of the New Man in Contemporary African Fiction: A Reading of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

Abstract

Critical works on Coetzee’s Disgrace shows that the novel constructs a distressing picture of the conditions in post-apartheid South Africa –tabling his attempts at blurring national enthusiasm, creating racial stereotypes and consequently damaging the hopes of the new South Africa.  However, a re-reading of the novel reveals that the survival of post-apartheid South Africa reside in the potential of a willing unity of racial bodies and a careful re-definition of masculinity vis-à-vis spatial re-configurations. Drawing on the concept of futurity and Frantz Fanon’s idea of the new man, this paper argues that the correlation between forms of community and forms of masculinity provide basis for re-configuring social cohesion in post-apartheid South Africa.