Paper- 14 Concept of 'We' and 'Other' in Waiting for Barbarians with reference of Orientalism

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Topic: Concept of 'We' and 'Other' in Waiting for Barbarians with reference of Orientalism

Prepared by: Komal Shahedapuri

            
Roll No: 13

Paper: 14 African Literature

M.A (English):  Sem -4

Enrollment No: 2069108420170027

Batch: 2016-18

Email:   komaltara1311@gmail.com

Submitted to:  Smt .S. B Gardi, Department of English,                                                                MK Bhavnagar University.

Preface

          African Literature is history of Slavery, oppression or suppression, violence and humiliations of their life. This literature is not for Entertainment, not for Aesthetic delight but such literature disturb the mind leads to think about Humanity and so many other things. This literature is not written with Out of Compassion but it is written out of Disgustful life which is experienced by writers themselves. (Joshi)

‘Waiting For the Barbarians’, a novel written by John Maxwell Coetzee in 1980, set in an unknown empire. Coetzee is a South African novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. In this novel, ''Waiting for the Barbarians,'' Mr. Coetzee has found a narrative strategy for controlling the tension between subject and author. This novel deals with the theme of torture by members of Third Bureau on the people of unspecific town only because of the prophecy that Barbarians are going to attack, Third Bureau members physically and mentally torture people of the  town.

Concept of ‘We’ and ‘Other’

   

                  

One's identity (Nomads) and existence depends on ‘Other’ people of unknown empire. Novel raises the question of conflict between civilization and Barbadians. But who decides who is civilized and who are Barbarians? The Barbarians represents a kind of outside threat which seek to trample on the security and safety of the people of the empire. There is also the reflection of power relation between Civilized and Barbarians means White and Blacks. Anxiety and fear remains from the beginning of the novel until the end of it. (Joshi)

Empire

Empire is abstract, placeless and timeless but power operates on the innocent nomads of that town. Empire constantly living under the threat that Barbarians will attack over empire, only because of that illusion members of Third Bureau torturing Nomads of that town physically as well as psychologically. To whom we consider as Barbarians?, to those who are different from us or not part of us or an outsiders. We just used to say they are different then us and we behave with them in a different way that create the identity of ‘Other’ and we automatically create our identity as ‘We’ which discriminate people on the different grounds. Colonel Joll represents ‘WE’ that tortures Old man and Young Boy who are the representative of ‘Other’. ‘Other’ represents mute and voiceless that never raise voice against the power of the empire (We). There are many people who are considered as the Other who don’t have power to do anything as Barbarian Girl who seduced by the magistrate who sympathizes and rule over her but she can’t raise her voice against authority/Power.

Borders

Borders are defended and attacked, questioned and crossed, made   to stand for what is within and what is without. The concept of 'we' and 'They' depends on thinking capacity and ability to define the things. Borders are great demarcation of fatal dichotomy that has guided all of human history, the differentiation of We and Other. As border between India and Pakistan has creates so many differences because of which wars/battles took place.     India has made many writers as Others by giving them exile because they wrote something negative/real about their own country When` people considered the country is as our or as a part of empire, settlements and have some conscious feeling with the place they define themselves as 'We' putting themselves as in center. And when Native people define outsider as visitors putting them out of center means in margin, they become 'Other' or 'They' for them. (Joshi)

In this context, we can put Oriental thinking of West that sees Middle East country as the Orient which creates the sense of ‘We’ in the mind of Western countries."Orientalism” is 1978 book by Edward Said, is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous. Edward W. Said, in his groundbreaking book, Orientalism, defined it as the acceptance in the West of “the basic distinction between East and West.  In Said’s analysis, the West essentializes these societies as static, uncivilized and undeveloped. (Orientalism)

Expansion and Elimination

The novel is about the Empire that must be expanding at any cost either by transforming Other or wiping it from the face of the earth. In this novel, Nameless narrator governing the unknown empire which expands by removing nomads or barbarians from that town. Empire (We) seeks to eliminate the Otherness upon which their own existence depends, they believe that ‘Others’ are their enemies. The empire exists only in relation to Barbarians. If Barbarians exist or 'Other' are there then Empire gain power to rule over them.  Existence of the empire is depended on the existence of barbarians. If barbarians are not existed then who know that empire is powerful or who say that empire has the whole power control. It means. If barbarians are existed then and then empire will be existed in the world. (Bhatt) 

Torture and Brutality

Torture has exerted a dark fascination on Coetzee and many other South African authors. Coetzee suggests, ‘The true challenge is how not to play the game by the rules of the state, how to establish one's own authority, how to imagine torture and death on one's own terms’. It is about the impact of the torture chamber on the life of a man of conscience". This man of conscience, known only as the Magistrate, is the chief administrator of a small village on the frontier between the civilization of the Empire and the wastelands inhabited by the nomadic Barbarians. As Joll interrogates and tortures Barbarian prisoners, the Magistrate becomes increasingly sympathetic toward the victims. When the Colonel leaves the outpost, the Magistrate takes a Barbarian woman, crippled as a result of her torture, into his house and bed. Coetzee's references to contemporary literary theory suggest the authorial impotency of the novelist who attempts to write about torture, oppression, and-in his particular case-South Africa. The Magistrate's storytelling thus represents Coetzee's own way of solving the first moral dilemma of the author writing about torture. The narrator also comments on the specific technique to be employed when the Magistrate tells Joll, 'They [the tiles] form an allegory. They can be read in many orders. Further, each single slip can be read in many ways. Together they can be read as a domestic journal, or they can be read as a plan of war, or they can be turned on their sides and read as a history of the last years of the Empire-the old Empire, I mean' " (112) (Van Zanten and M)

By this torture on nomads as well as on the Magistrate later on make them Other. Even Magistrate had lots of torture that his life became like the dog because he save Barbarian girl from the torture but Magistrate himself has created feelings of Otherness for the Barbarian girl by seduced her which create women as Other.

Magistrate’s view as a part of ‘We’

Magistrate has different view about torture and the process of interrogating to Nomads giving them pain as he says. ‘I ought never to have taken my lantern to see what was going on in the hut by the granary’. He has dual personality as on one side he sympathizes with Nomads but can’t do anything to save them from the tortures on the other side he has seduced barbarian girl and rule over her as he has authority. He says, ‘It has no escaped me that an interrogator can wear two masks, speak with two voices, one harsh, one seductive’.

Instruments for giving pain

Joll tortured the Barbarian girl and her father by extension, from his we can say that ‘WE’(Joll) did wrong to Others, ’WE’ used instruments of pain that is on the body as Magistrate on the barbarian girl as torture to voiceless/ mute and her body he objectified her body, Bodies were cutting into it probing to get the truth out of his victims. Examples, the puncture marks on the boy’s stomach and legs shows their brutality and there is caterpillarish scars near the barbarian girl’s eye that reflects their ways of interrogating and investigating on the Nomads. It seems that real barbarians were ‘We’ not the ‘Others’. This is considered as Crime towards humanity where humans can’t understand other humans and their problems or situation of life and in spite of help them they more torture hem that they are the ‘Others’ or inferiors to them.

Thus, the concept of ‘We’ and ‘Other’ is deeply interpreted and practiced in this novel by the members of the Third Bureau on the Nomads people only because of the Prophecy.  

Works Cited

Bhatt, Urvi. "Concept of 'We' and 'Other' as shown in the Waiting For The Barbrians." slideshare. <https://www.slideshare.net/bhatturvi/31-urvi-bhatt-waiting-for-the-barbarian-ppt>.

Joshi, Bhumi. "Existentialism in the novel "Waiting For the Barbarians" ." 31 March 2016. Blogger. 3 April 2018 <http://bhumijoshi2014-16.blogspot.in/2016/03/existentialism-in-novel-waiting-for.html>.

"Orientalism." Wikipedia. 3 April 2018 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism>.

Van Zanten, Susan Gallaghe and J Coetzee M. "Torture and the Novel: J. M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians"." JSTOR (1988): 277-285.