"Foe": Writing As Literary Colonialism
Or at least that seems to be part of the point Coetzee is trying to make. Barton speaking to Foe: You err most tellingly in failing to distinguish between my silences and the silences of a being such as Friday. Friday has no command of words and therefore no defense against being re-shaped day by day in conformity with the desires of others. I say he is a cannibal and he becomes a cannibal; I say he is a laundryman and he becomes a laundryman. What is the truth of Friday? You will respond: he is neither cannibal nor laundryman, these are mere names, they do not touch his essence, he is a substantial body, he is himself, Friday is Friday. But that is not so. No matter what he is to himself (is he anything to himself? -- how can he tell us?), what he is to the world is what I make of him. * Another good quote--very similar to something Coetzee has written elsewhere (I can't track it down--was it in Summertime, In the Heart of the Country, or Youth ?--and if the wor...