To preface, even
Coetzee, the writer of the tale, regardless of the accuracy with which he
captures the subaltern’s experience, remains in the intellectual elite, completely
disconnected from the experience and consciousness of the subaltern his novel
seeks to depict. J.M. Coetzee is a
member of the intellectual elite. Born into a climate of educational
fulfillment and financial comfort, his father an attorney and mother a
school-teacher, and himself being a white, college educated member of the South
African bourgeois, Coetzee is therefore disconnected from the subaltern
protagonist his text seeks to identify. Coetzee’s writing, regardless of
accuracy, is thus a representation of a subaltern consciousness he is truly not
a participant in. Spivak, in her piece entitled “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
makes use of a passage from Marx in an attempt to make evident the degree to
which the subaltern is represented, and as a result, finds themselves a subject
under the authoritative figure who serves as a representative-
“The small peasant proprietors ‘cannot
represent themselves; they must be represented. Their representative must
appear simultaneously as their master, as an authority over them, as
unrestricted governmental power that protects them from the other classes and
sends them rain and sunshine from above.’”
However, does this mean Coetzee should refrain from presenting the
experience of his subaltern character? She argues that the intellectual’s
solution to the subaltern groups’ inability to speak should not be to avoid
representation, but rather to be aware of the degree to which they are
disconnected from the consciousness of the subaltern. However, it is worth
noting that Coetzee is precisely the representative Spivak’s piece seeks to
explore, a representative who can only present an outside perspective on the
experiences of a subaltern group. However, is all of literature not subject to
the very same ideology? Otherwise, would a writer be required to only speak of
their own ethnicity, socio-political class, gender, and experience?
“For the ‘true’ subaltern group,
whose identity is its difference, there is no unrepresentable subaltern subject
that can know and speak itself; the intellectual’s solution is not to abstain
from representation.”
As Spivak argues, representation
is not a problem- it is only a problem when the representative remains ignorant
to the people they seek to represent. The degree to which the intellectual and
representative is separated from the subaltern group is something to be aware
of, an understanding of which can perhaps better equip the representative to
more accurately capture the consciousness of the subaltern, and perhaps
discover a more apt methodology for the subaltern to speak for themselves.
Throughout the
novel, the theme of communication- or more accurately a failure to communicate
with any effectiveness- overwhelms the text, dramatically highlighting
Michael’s inability to communicate his own story. The theme of communication,
with respect to Michael, progresses and transitions throughout the text. Each
section of the book promotes an entirely new way of interpreting Michael’s
relationship with communication. The first section exhibits his attempts to
ask, search, and discuss matters relevant to his experience. However, contrary
to his attempts, there seems to be a massive resistance toward providing him with
answers. Even when he speaks directly to specific individuals, they often
restrain from answering. Michael asks, but is given no answers-
“Next to K, by the window, sat an
older man dressed in a suit. K touches his sleeve. ‘Where are they taking us?’
he asked. The stranger looked him over and shrugged. ‘Why does it matter where
they are taking us?’
.
Michael finds
several instances, institutionalized and publicly, where his questions, words,
perspective, and story is completely ignored. The majority of the time people
speak to him, it is either to get something from him or force him to do
something. Yet, he never truly has the ability to freely discuss and be
listened to. This failure to communicate effectively drives him into seclusion,
where he attempts to alienate himself from those who refuse to speak, or listen
to him. The second takes an entirely different perspective. Michael is
constantly persuaded to speak, to talk, to tell of his experiences, but refuses
to do so
“Talk, Michaels,’ I resumed. ‘You see how easy it is to talk, now talk. Listen to me, listen how easily I
fill this room with words. I know people who can talk all day without getting
tired, who can fill up whole worlds talking.’”
Even when he
speaks, he is, once again, not truly listened to “He says his name is not
Michaels but Michael.”
For the duration
of the second section, the doctor becomes increasingly more interested in the
story Michael refuses to tell, yet, even at the end, Michael internalizes the
story rather than communicates it. He finds himself continually pressured to
speak, but he will not. One of the largest issues the novel presents is why he
refuses to do so. Could this be because of the pressure, the idea of being
forced to tell a story, a resistance to the power being exerted over him? Could
it be due to his story being constantly reworded, rephrased, and politicized?
Or is it simply a reaction to the previous refusal to listen? The ambiguity comes with a purpose; to allow
the reader to make their own conclusions. The answer is probably a combination
of these things rather than merely one. The third section embodies Michael’s
attempt to retell his story, but his incapacity and intellectual inability to
do so, at least in an effective manner. He reflects on his own limitations as a
story-teller, as a figure who can accurately retell his experiences,
“They want me to open my heart
and tell them the story of a life lived in cages. They want to hear about all
the cages I have lived in, as if I were a budgie or a white mouse or a monkey.
And if I had learned storytelling at Huis Norenius instead of potato-peeling
and sums, if they had made me practice the story of my life every day, standing
over me with a cane till I could perform without stumbling, I might have known
how to please them.”
This transition
serves as Coetzee’s metaphorical representation for the ways in which subaltern
groups as a collective have progressed as a unit. They move from a period in
which little to no concern is placed on them, to a period in which entire
schools of study (such as the subaltern studies and post-colonial departments)
have been devised in an attempt to explore their histories, to a more modern
approach where there seems to be a realization that even when they attempt to
speak, the effectiveness with which they are received, and the lack of power
they withhold renders them utterly speechless (most aptly depicted with
Spivak’s piece). They have transitioned, just like Michael, into a state where
even while people attempt to pull stories from them, these stories are
ineffectively communicated.
Through
narrative perspective, the novel shows the ways in which diverging individuals,
or representatives of larger social institutions, present, re-interpret, and
construe the experience of the subaltern by adding their own ideologies,
regardless of the accuracy with which the subaltern experiences and
internalizes such ideals. The narrative
is split into three books, the second of which is told from the perspective of
a doctor inside of the camps in which Michael is forced to reside, the other
two from a third person, unnamed narrator. Perhaps the most obvious
exemplification of the subaltern’s inability to communicate their own tale
stems from the idea that Michael never narrates his own tale. Instead, it is
always another narrator, outside of Michael’s experience, attempting to
re-present his tale. Spivak argues that in terms of narratives, the subaltern
is essentially diagnosed, where an onlooker prescribes ideas, ideologies, and
meanings onto the subaltern group much like a doctor would analyze information
and diagnose a patient-
“The limits of this
representationalist realism are reached with Deleuze: ‘Reality is what actually
happens in a factory, in a school, in barracks, in a prison, in a police
station.’ […] Indeed, the concrete experience that is the guarantor
of the political appeal of prisoners, soldiers and schoolchildren is disclosed
through the concrete experience of the intellectual, the one who diagnoses the
episteme.”
In the case of Michael,
his story is literally being diagnosed. Furthermore, this analysis and
diagnosis comes from an outside perspective, one who remains outside of the
concrete experience of the subaltern. The second narrative perspective provides
a nearly identical situation to the one Spivak alludes to- where the doctor
attempts to symbolically diagnose Michael’s story. However, the text shows the
doctor’s tendency to link his story to the ideologies of the institution he
represents. The institution, a war camp, seeks to understand Michael’s story,
and even depict it, through warlike ideologies.
“Michaels means something, and
the meaning he has is not private to me. If it were, if the origin of this
meaning were no more than a lack in myself, a lack, say, of something to
believe in, since we all know how difficult it is to satisfy a hunger for
belief with the vision of times to come that the war, to say nothing of the
camps, presents us with, if it were a mere craving for meaning that sent me to
Michaels and his story, if Michaels himself were no more than what he seems to
be… then would I not have every justification for retiring to the toilets behind
the jockeys’ changing room and locking myself in the cubicle and putting a
bullet through my head.”
The doctor’s tendency,
or perhaps need, to find meaning in Michael’s story is here described.
Michael’s story must mean something
to him, to the institution he works under. The doctor represents the larger
institutions present, who with their limited knowledge, attempt to prescribe
meaning and force ideologies onto the subaltern groups. Without ever truly
knowing Michael’s experience, the doctor picks and chooses fragments to
prescribe a meaning, yet he acknowledges his own limitations-
“’And now, last topic, your
garden,’ I would have panted. ‘Let me tell you the meaning of the sacred and
alluring garden that blooms in the heart of the desert and produces the food of
life. […] ‘Am I right?’ I would shout. ‘Have I understood you? If I am right,
hold up your right hand; if I am wrong, hold up your left!’”
By phrasing it in such a way, most strongly
worded with “let me tell you the meaning,” the quote exemplifies the
subaltern’s inability to represent their own meaning in a socio-political
setting, the meanings are instead told to them by the institutions’ individuals
representing them.
Through the experience
Michael undergoes in the camps, the text develops the idea that a subaltern is
forced to react to the agendas of the dominant societal class, essentially
redeveloping their individual experiences and further separating the
presentation from the subaltern consciousness.
The work camps serve as an allegorical representation for the ways in
which a subaltern is literally forced into the agendas of the larger political
institutions. Whether or not Michael wishes to be a subject to these agendas,
he must. Whether or not Michael supports the war efforts, understands the war
efforts, or even cares about the war efforts at all remains unimportant to the
institution, he will still be forced to labor for the cause. Michael’s attempt
to separate himself from the war the institutions and political climate of the
time force onto him are made most evident through his discussion with the
doctor, where the doctor, representing the institutional work camp, expresses
his frustration-
“At last he spoke: ’I am not in
the war.’ Irritation overflowed in me. ‘You are not in the war? Of course you
are in the war, man, whether you like it or not! This is a camp, not a holiday
resort, not a convalescent home: it is a camp where we rehabilitate people like
you and make you work! […] And if you don’t co-operate you will go to a place
that is a lot worse than this!’”
Even if an individual resists these
impositions as a subject, he will be punished and ultimately forced to
internalize and react to the agenda. Whether or not Michael chooses to be in
the war becomes irrelevant during his occupation at the camp, he will be forced
to “jump when they say jump,” at least until he literally
collapses. Inside of the camps, Michael’s agenda is forced to relate to the
ideologies of the war. The subaltern, as a subject, is shown to have their
individual experience reformed to fit the climate, agenda, and aims of the
institution they are subject to. Even by attempting to avoid participation, his
actions, or inaction, are reformed to relate. His refusal to eat becomes a
refusal to participate in the war. His departure from the camp becomes his
attempt at separating himself from the power structure forcing the war upon
him. The subaltern’s actions are thus reformed and redeveloped to adhere to the
agenda of the dominant institution, separating their actions from individual
experiences and bulking them into a framework of outside ideologies.
The Life and
Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee follows the journey of
Michael, a South African subaltern, who exemplifies the lack of voice,
educational status, and socio-political power subaltern groups possess in
post-colonial societies with which to develop, record, and tell their own
stories- instead, their stories come only in the form of representation from an
individual outside of the subaltern group. Additionally, the novel comments on
the fundamental altercations that come when these stories are re-presented.
Just as Michael’s story changes depending on who is telling it, the story of
the subaltern continually shifts. Their ideologies, beliefs, and experiences
tend to be altered to fit specific agendas, premises, and belief structures of
the ruling classes whom the intellectual is typically connected with. However,
a mere awareness of this by authors, critics, and theorists tends to bridge
this disconnect. For instance, does Coetzee, apparently aware of these
concepts, accurately represent a subaltern group, or does he just comment on
the precarious state of affairs they reside in? The novel seems to represent
both- a figurehead for the degree to which subalterns are represented, and also
an attempt at bridging these gaps.
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