A culture of language, a language of culture: Nietzsche's mnemonics in J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians

Název: A culture of language, a language of culture: Nietzsche's mnemonics in J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians
Autor: Michta, Kamil
Zdrojový dokument: Theory and Practice in English Studies. 2013, roč. 6, č. 1, s. [17]-26
Rozsah
[17]-26
  • ISSN
    1805-0859
Type: Článek
Jazyk
Licence: Neurčená licence
 

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Abstrakt(y)
In On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche suggested that the most effective mnemonic, that is, a way to remember something, for example, a new meaning or even a whole language, is when what must be remembered "does not stop hurting". Is then a good teacher an effective torturer? J.M. Coetzee seems to argue in Waiting for the Barbarians that pain can sometimes function as a mnemonic tool used to teach others a language by means of which they would be able to know and communicate with their master, to use Nietzschean terms once again, and to "speak the truth". The language of the culture they are installed to, then, is one of violence. The culture of that language, as Coetzee seems to suggest, is that of the Western civilised world. It appears that the language J.M. Coetzee muses about in the novel is the same "open and simple speech" that Kipling referred to when he wrote on the white man's educative burden in the uncivilised world.
Reference
[1] Cichoń, Anna Izabela. 2010. "Violence and Complicity in J. M. Coetzee's Works." Werkwinkel 5: 43–72.

[2] Coetzee, John Maxwell. 2004. Waiting for the Barbarians. London: Vintage Books.

[3] Coetzee, John Maxwell. 1992. Doubling the Point, edited by David Attwell. Cambridge, Mss: Harvard University Press.

[4] Conrad, Joseph. 2012 (1899). Heart of Darkness. Reprint: The Works of Joseph Conrad: Youth, Heart of Darkness, The End of the Tether. Edited by Owen Knowels. New York: Cambridge University Press.

[5] Head, Dominic. 2007. The Cambridge Introduction to J. M. Coetzee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[6] Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1887. The Genealogy of Morals. Translated by Horace B. Samuel, M. A. New York: Boni and Liveright.