Author-ities: Postcolonial challenges in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe
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Abstract
J. M. Coetzee’s 1986 novel Foe is a postcolonial reworking of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. The novel differs from other examples of postcolonial writing back that undermine canonical authority by way of constructing alternative narratives and seeking to reassign agency to the deprived and marginalized subjects of colonialism. Coetzee shifts the focus away from the level of competing narratives to an alternative account of the genesis of the canonical text itself. The article argues that Coetzee produces a postcolonial critique of a second order by weaving together intertextual and metafictional elements. At the centre of this project stands the question of authorship. The struggle for authorial authority between the novel’s multiple author figures lays bare the structures of power and repression at work in the creation of colonialist literature by drawing attention to the acts of omission and silencing in its wake.
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