The Magistrate and Joll's different senses of "civilization" refer back to their positions in the novel's semiotic square, which I discuss in my own response; our protagonist may categorized as representing the not uncivilized, hence his mocking, sardonic use, and the Colonel as the not civilized, explaining his grave belief in the term as it applies to the Empire, and his sneering against those foolishly classify the barbarian culture as such. The ironies are different, not shared. In order to play their roles in the novel, the two must construe "civilization" differently; the Magistrate's heroic position as He Who Rebels and Joll's as He Who Follows necessitate that they must enter into conflict over such abstract concepts as "civilization" in order for the narrative to work.
Coetzee links torture and sex as acts of a highly intimate nature, going as far as to have his narrator suggest that he might have been jealous of Colonel Joll for being able to inflict something permanent upon the 'Barbarian' Girl. What, if any, implications do you see in this concept, with regards to human interest in sexuality and in connecting with other people?
Unlike virginity which, when taken, leaves no visible trace evidence on the individual's exterior, the girl's scars are a permanent, and not the source of pleasure. For one as sinister as Joll, rape would not be a crime of pleasure to begin with, but her scar tells all that he made her suffer, despite the wealth of unseen psychological damage. Humans are inherently insecure about the impact they make on others, and the fact that what is seen is more easily believed, Joll's injuring of the girl seems perfectly logical and painfully human on his part. Also, it is the one part of her the Magistrate cannot purify, unlike her feet and body.
Unlike virginity which, when taken, leaves no visible trace evidence on the individual's exterior, the girl's scars are a permanent, and not the source of pleasure. For one as sinister as Joll, rape would not be a crime of pleasure to begin with, but her scar tells all that he made her suffer, despite the wealth of unseen psychological damage. Humans are inherently insecure about the impact they make on others, and the fact that what is seen is more easily believed, Joll's injuring of the girl seems perfectly logical and painfully human on his part. Also, it is the one part of her the Magistrate cannot purify, unlike her feet and body.
Is Coetzee making more of a statement about man's inner beast, or a political statement? Or both?
Aren't all political statement's about man's bestial side? After all, they are not mutually exclusive genres. Coetzee's statement is more about the confluence of man's darker nature (men like Joll) meeting political power (The Empire) and the resulting banality of evil (Third Bureau) the culture can create. The Third Bureau's shadowy nature and its faceless, "official" moniker tell little of its nature. Also, we cannot overlook its name connection to the Third Reich. Coetzee's statement falls along these lines: imperialism thrives because the colonizing nation ties abuses of natives to their own esteem as a superior, more successful nation; their politics reflect a "higher mind." However, this thought system requires narcissism, xenophobia, and ruthlessness, which in order to further the national cult of superiority, must insidiously spread among the populace, making the Empire's savagery against the barbarians rational insofar as it proves the Empire to be the guiding nation of the world.
Consider the ruins the Magistrate likes to excavate- he uses the excavation as a punishment for soldiers and criminals, but his interest in the ruins is does not continue throughout the book. Why does his interest in them dissipate?
His interest in those ruins depends on the destruction and dissolution of the civilization in which they originated. The Magistrate is indebted to the civilizations -- Western or otherwise -- who through total war annihilated the region's existing culture to the point where it could only exist underground. His interest in these excavations wanes because he understands his position as one of the many cogs in the imperialist machine that is the Empire, a nation devoted to assimilating others at the expense of the conquered's culture. The homogeneity of his culture erases anything special or aesthetically unique about the colonialized natives. His anthropological hobby is a study of death and decomposition.
When it comes to the quote “I wish that these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we would learn to respect them” (58) do you see this as hopeful, naïve, a passing fancy etc.? How does this quote match up with others that appear in the first part of the novel?
For the barbarians to turn insurgent against the Empire would debase their relative nobility. Marxist criticism teaches that revolutionary systems of thought cannot think outside of the ideology against which they rebel, and the barbarians, in taking arms, would prove themselves to be on equal footing with the brutal warfare of the Third Bureau. No longer deserving of glory for their nonviolent politics, the natives would then fulfill the Orientalist binary used to oppress them -- they would be savages. There is a double bind here, for by remaining passive, they reveal themselves to be, as the binary perpetuates, cowardly. The quote recalls the Magistrate's fury at Joll at the detainees, screaming "Did no one tell him these are fishing people?...Do these people look like a danger to the Empire?" (19). They demand the barbarians to conform the binary they've created for them, despite their complete and total ignorance of their aggressor's ideology.
For the barbarians to turn insurgent against the Empire would debase their relative nobility. Marxist criticism teaches that revolutionary systems of thought cannot think outside of the ideology against which they rebel, and the barbarians, in taking arms, would prove themselves to be on equal footing with the brutal warfare of the Third Bureau. No longer deserving of glory for their nonviolent politics, the natives would then fulfill the Orientalist binary used to oppress them -- they would be savages. There is a double bind here, for by remaining passive, they reveal themselves to be, as the binary perpetuates, cowardly. The quote recalls the Magistrate's fury at Joll at the detainees, screaming "Did no one tell him these are fishing people?...Do these people look like a danger to the Empire?" (19). They demand the barbarians to conform the binary they've created for them, despite their complete and total ignorance of their aggressor's ideology.
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