Coetzee: Summertime: Politics

You say he was not political. Do you mean that he was apolitical? Because some people would say that the apolitical is just one variety of the political. 

No, not apolitical, I would rather say anti-political. He thought that politics brought out the worst in people. It brought out the worst in people and also brought to the surface the worst types in society. He preferred to have nothing to do with it. 

Did he preach this anti-political politics in his classes? 

Of course not. He was very scrupulous about not preaching. His political beliefs you discovered only after you got to know him better. 

You say his politics were Utopian. Are you implying they were unrealistic? 

He looked forward to the day when politics and the state would wither away. I would call that Utopian. On the other hand, he did not invest a great deal of himself in these Utopian longings. He was too much of a Calvinist for that. 

Please explain. 

You want me to say what lay behind Coetzee’s politics? You can best get that from his books. But let me try anyway. In Coetzee’s eyes, we human beings will never abandon politics because politics is too convenient and too attractive as a theatre in which to give rein to our baser emotions. Baser emotions meaning hatred and rancour and spite and jealousy and bloodlust and so forth. In otherwords, politics as we know it is a symptom of our fallen state and expresses that fallen state.