The Language of Dominance:

An Examination of Rhetorical Justification in J.M. Coetzees Disgrace

J.M. Coetzees novel Disgrace is set in the uneasy climate of post-apartheid South Africa.
Published in 1999, five years after institutional apartheid ended, Disgrace personifies the end of
a generational ethos in the aging fifty-two year old body of David Lurie, a white professor of
Romantic Literature at the Technical University of Cape Town. The ethos of the apartheid era
pervades the novel, infusing the work with an atmosphere of violence and change. Coetzee
engages with a variety of injustices that occur between men and women, adults and children,
animals and humans, and races, all within the context of the shifting power dynamic in South
Africa during the 1990s. I will be examining the language of dominance that supports the ethos
of David Luries generation, as well as the shifts in rhetoric and thought that are exhibited by
minor characters in Disgrace. In order to discuss the lexicon of dominance in a holistic way, I
will be using the conceptual framework created by ecofeminist scholars to probe what Garrard
refers to as the androcentric dualism between man and woman" (Garrard). Ecofeminist theory
examines the implied hierarchy of lifeforms which is based on biological interpretations of
differences between men and women, humans and animals, and animals and plants, focusing on
the problematic nature of the "language of domination" which reinforces and justifies this
rhetoric (Garrard). I propose that language which supports or justifies domination is the main
conflict and subject of discourse in Disgrace, and that the rhetoric that Lurie uses and identifies
with is what marks him as a dominant individual in South African society.

Dominance and Ethics

In the new political climate of post-apartheid South Africa the dominant European culture
is in the process of being replaced by a newly integrated population. The appearance of a
population that was so recently repressed challenges the culture and ethos of an upper-class
white community that was until recently supported by the conceptual frameworks provided by
European culture. Disgrace is set during the time when the ethos of South Africas past is in the
process of being replaced by a new type of dominant language and ethical framework. As a relic
of an almost extinct culture, Lurie clings to his personal beliefs. He uses the language of

sentimentality to support an Eros driven lifestyle that is fundamentally egocentric. As a member

of the previously dominant class, he denies autonomy to any being that does not fit the dominant
image of power. However, his ethos comes into conflict with his society as he experiences the
change in dominant culture which is occurring during his lifetime. Luries personal ethos is no
longer supported by the society that he inhabits, which compromises the legitimacy of his ethical
framework. Immanuel Kant defines morality thusly: In order for my action to be good, I must
affirm it as universally desirable, and that human beings have the capacity to act ethically on
accordance to this principle (Kant). In post-apartheid South Africa, Luries ethical framework is
no longer held to be universally desirable by his population. The moral justifications that Lurie
offers for his actions come out of the languages of sentimentality and abstract thought, a
rhetorical style that is linked to another time and place. The language of dominance that Lurie
uses is produced by the literary echo-chamber of Western Romantic literature, a frame of
reference that is falling out of vogue in a society populated by people who have been historically
repressed by such rhetoric. The literary knowledge that Lurie possesses hinders him in his
attempts to interact with members of his society that are not as well-versed in this particular
field. Although Luries literary knowledge is associated with the dominant interpolative forces of
South Africa, that is, the white Eurocentric upper-class, his knowledge is becoming increasingly
esoteric and impotent. The increasing failure of Luries rhetoric to give him what he desires
indicates the fading abilities of the dominant lexicon he was exposed to, and suggests that there
is a new dominant lexicon on the horizon.
Sensibility: the Refuge of Privilege
In her essay The Rights of a Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft rebukes Edmund Burke for
the sentimental nature of his argument in Reflections on the Revolution in France. She argues
that sentiment is the refuge of those who propose to preserve the past without any regard for the
deprivations or injustices that the past has promoted. The implication of her argument is that
sentiment only serves the needs of the dominant portion of society, and thus is used as rhetorical
justification for injustices or ethical failings propagated by the upper echelon of society.
Wollstonecraft argues that the use of irrational sentimental rhetoric is harmful even to those that

it privileges and protects: Their senses are inflamed, and their understandings neglected,
consequently they become the prey of their senses, delicately termed sensibility, and are blown
about by every momentary gust of feeling (176 Wollstonecraft). Wollstonecrafts description of
the effects of an overly sentimental intellectuality is an apt description of David Lurie. In fact,
Lurie describes himself as being controlled by his senses: suffice it to say that Eros entered (52
Coetzee). This inability to control desire, or sensory feeling, leads David Lurie to inflict harm on
himself and others. Yet, Lurie does not view himself as the victim of sentiment: he [Lurie] is
not, he hopes, a sentimentalist (143 Coetzee). Lurie is able to view his sensory weakness as
justifiable as long as his sentiments are aligned with the dominant rhetoric of his society. Val
Plumwood argues that: reason in the western tradition has been constructed as the privileged
domain of the master, who has conceived nature as a wife or subordinate other encompassing
and representing the sphere of materiality, subsistence and the feminine which the master has
split off and constructed as beneath him (Plumwood 14). The justification granted by the
dominant lexicon is inherently hierarchical and oppositional: this means that violence is justified
when it is created by the dominant force. Lurie has the unusual experience of viewing violence
from the perspective of the dominant force (when he is the rapist) and an outside observer (when
his daughter, Lucy, is raped). Lurie does not view the situation from a sentimental light when he
is a position of weakness, that is, of an outside observer: Violation: that is the word he would
like to force out of Petrus (119 Coetzee). Lurie is able to understand the effects of violence on
the oppressed when he is not in a position of dominance, hence his use of the term violation.
However, he retains the ability to justify actions of dominance through abstractions: he suggests
that the men were acting due to historical causes rather than personal. The violation of Lucy does
not stop Lurie from viewing the nature of dominant culture as justified. He is committed to the
idea of a hierarchical world, and views his support of dominant actions as mere rationality.
Plumwood argues that critiquing the dominant forms of reason which embody the master
identity and oppose themselves to the sphere of nature does not imply abandoning all forms of
reason, science and individuality. Rather, it involves their redefinition or reconstruction in less
oppositional and hierarchical ways (Plumwood 15). It is this redefinition or reconstruction that

is opposed by arguments of sensibility and sentiment, and thus the conceptual framework that is
upheld by Luries literary echo-chamber.

The Problem of Sex: David Lurie and Soraya

Coetzee examines dominance through one of the most obvious demonstrations of
dominant culture: sexuality. The heterosexual model of sexuality has traditionally been one that
supports the hierarchical nature of the male / female gender binary. In Disgrace, the dominant
aspects of heterosexuality are heightened by David Luries personality. David Lurie requires
absolute confidence in his own position of power. This is demonstrated by his preference for
women who are much younger than him (who he consistently demotes to the status of children)
and through his preference for exotic or non-white women. Through his preferences Lurie
chooses to emphasize the inequality between himself and his lovers. Disgrace opens with
Coetzees assertion that For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he [Lurie] has, to his mind,
solved the problem of sex rather well (1 Coetzee). Luries method of solving the problem of
sexuality is to express his sexual impulses with a sex-worker who is markedly unequal to him in
social status (with regards to gender, race, age, and social class). Luries interactions with Soraya
are characterized by a notable lack of passion: Intercourse between Soraya and himself must be,
he imagines, rather like the copulation of snakes: lengthy, absorbed, but rather abstract, rather
dry, even at its hottest (2-3 Coetzee). Luries description of the lack of personal investment and
conspicuous abstraction of the intercourse points to a larger theme in Luries life. He persistently
chooses abstractions over personal connections. It is this tendency or inclination which allows
him to objectify Melanie later on in Disgrace: he is able to reduce Melanie to an object of erotic
fixation, and their relationship to a natural occurrence driven by desire and literary precedent.
Coetzee is not unaware of his sexual preferences: he finds Soraya on their [the agencys]
books under Exotic (7 Coetzee). Additionally, Lurie understands that he is seen as an
exploitative oppressor: he has a shrewd idea of how prostitutes speak to themselves about the
men who frequent them, the older men in particular. They tell stories, they laugh, but they
shudder too, as one shudders at a cockroach in a washbasin in the middle of the night. Soon

daintily, maliciously, he will be shuddered over. It is a fate he cannot escape (8 Coetzee). This
self-awareness does not lead Lurie to challenge his actions, but it does lead him to search for
justifications. One such way that Lurie distances himself from the image of himself that he
imagines that prostitutes hold is through his rhetorical interpretations of situations. After
encountering Soraya with her children, he feels a growing coolness as she transforms herself
into just another woman and him just another client (7 Coetzee). However, this client and
prostitute relationship is what has existed between them from the start. The shift comes from his
(and presumably Sorayas) inability to maintain the facade of a delusional relationship under the
weight of a natural encounter. Lurie understands the role he plays in Sorayas life through a basic
aggressor / victim binary. He refers to himself as a predator: what should a predator expect
when he intrudes into the vixens nest, into the home of her cubs? (10 Coetzee). When Coetzee
discovers Sorayas personal identity she is transformed from a woman who could be his child:
technically he is old enough to be her father (1 Coetzee) to a mother who has children of her
own.
Luries requirement that women be satellites to to his male identity is subverted by his
sexual experience with Bev Shaw: he describes their sexual interaction as being without
passion, but without distaste either. ...He lets her do it, as he has let her do everything she has felt
the need to do (150 Coetzee). There are echoes of his relationship with Soraya in this
description, particularly the lack of passion, but here Bev is the instigator and he is the
supplicant. The relationship is on the same sort of terms that he had implied existed in his
relationship with Soraya; however, the interaction is missing the elements of dominance that had
defined the appeal of his relationship with Soraya. Bevs age, autonomy, and willingness makes
this interaction ultimately unfulfilling for Lurie. He is being comforted, like a child, rather than
taking his sexual pleasure like a male aggressor. Lurie accepts that he needs the dominant terms
of his sexual interactions to be explicit: he finds sexual satisfaction for the first time since
Melanie with a young sex-worker he picks up on the city streets. Lurie describes her as being
younger than she had seemed under the streetlights, younger even than Melanie ... He feels
drowsy, contented; also strangely protective (194 Coetzee). In this exchange the transgressive

elements of conflating the roles of father and lover are reaffirmed through the blurring of his
feelings towards this sex-worker.
The Abstractions of Fatherhood
David Luries difficulty in separating the roles of father and lover indicates that he has
pedophiliac tendencies. His daughter, Lucy, further complicates these distinctions, as she is
becoming older than the woman that Lurie is seducing. David Lurie is hyper-aware of his aging
appearance. He is also aware of the differences between a lover and a parent, but he frequently
blurs the lines, resulting in complicated transgressive relationships that he is forced to justify
against the disapproval of his society. It is this blurring of roles that causes Luries disgrace. Part
of Luries attachment to younger woman is his need for absolute sexual dominance: this is shown
through his persistent use of the term child to refer to women who are of age. Luries
infantilization of his sexual partners is denigrating to females, thus indicating the transgressive
nature of his desire. Even if the women he is involved with are legally adult, he views them as
children, which renders any relations that he has with them sexually problematic. Lurie reverts to
abstractions in order to justify his blurring of the lines between father and lover: Being a
father ... I cant help feeling that, by comparison with being a mother, being a father is a rather
abstract business (63 Coetzee). Because the mother is rooted in the natural and the material (she
physically gives birth) Lurie sees her role as being more connected to the actual child. This
distinction between fatherhood and motherhood leaves the role of father open to more abstract
interpretations of the role, such as the evolutionary quest to procreate. Val Plumwood notes that:
To be defined as nature ... is to be defined as passive, as non-agent and non-subject,
as the environment or invisible background conditions against which the
foreground achievements of reason or culture (provided typically by the white,
western, male expert or entrepreneur) take place. It is to be defined as a terra nullius,
a resource empty of its own purposes or meanings, and hence available to be annexed
for the purposes of those supposedly identified with reason or intellect, and to be
conceived and moulded in relation to these purposes. (Plumwood 15)

Luries relationship with Melanie is portrayed as the pinnacle of Luries pedophiliac desires, and
it is this relationship which causes his disgrace. Lurie is aware of this from the beginning, as he
consistently finds himself struggling between the language associated with paternity and that
which is associated with seduction. However, it is the transgressive nature of this relationship
which enthrals him: A child! he thinks: No more than a child! What am I doing? Yet his heart
lurches with desire (20 Coetzee). It is Melanies status as a near-child which excites him
sexually. When they interact, he finds it difficult to use the correct terminology or tone: the
voice he hears belongs to a cajoling parent, not a lover (20 Coetzee). The presence of his
daughters childhood in the familial home further complicates this affair: he makes up a bed for
her in his daughters old room, kisses her good night, leaves her to herself (26 Coetzee). Luries
actions are colored by the theatrical backdrop that is his daughters material possessions, and
these affect the way that he behaves: almost he says, Tell Daddy what is wrong. (26 Coetzee).
Luries conflation of the roles of father and lover seems to also affect Melanies behavior. Lurie
finds himself unable to interpret her actions in a way that is fully comprehendible: Mistress?
Daughter? ... She seems throughly at home (27 Coetzee). He understands that she is acting out a
role that is not fully natural to her, as he is, but he is unsure if she views him in the light of father
or lover. This ambiguity stems from his own ambiguity. His actions regarding Melanie are
echoed later in the novel, when his daughter, Lucy, is violated (80 Coetzee). Lurie is fully
aware of the language that is appropriate to use within the context of rape: he describes how
usurp upon means to intrude or encroach upon (21 Coetzee) when discussing Wordsworth,
indicating that he has the vocabulary to describe what he has done to Melanie. However, his use
of this lexicon only appears once he has been demoted from his dominant position.
Literature as a Defense: Lurie and Roleplaying
Literature gives Lurie the template to conduct his affairs, particularly his sexual affairs.
The templates that he has been educated in are increasingly impotent in the new South Africa, as
Luries students are educated in and relate to different modes of communicating and different

genres of art. Lurie attempts to seduce Melanie, a young student of his, by quoting Shakespeare.
He notes that the pentameter, whose cadence once served so well to oil the serpents words, now
only estranges (16 Coetzee). This failure demonstrates the generational divide between Melanie
and Lurie. However, his failure also highlights his inability to communicate with Melanie on the
most basic human level. She tells him that she does not like Shakespeare: I didnt want to take
Shakespeare again. I took Shakespeare last year (14 Coetzee) and yet he still uses Shakespeare
to woo her. His failure indicates that he is not listening to Melanie and not granting her the
ability to state preferences or opinions. Lurie is reducing Melanie to the role of the female in
Romantic literature, that is, the object of desire rather than an autonomous being. He describes
this phenomenon in class when he is lecturing on Wordsworth: If you were blind you would
hardly have fallen in love in the first place. But now, do you truly wish to see the beloved in the
cold clarity of the visual apparatus? It may be in your better interest to throw a veil over the gaze,
so as to keep her alive in her archetypal, goddess-like form (22 Coetzee).
Melanie tells Lurie that she enjoys the work of Adrienne Rich, Toni Morrison, Alice
Walker. The writers that she names are all feminist, female, and concerned with social issues.
Two of them are black, like Melanie. They are far closer to being Melanies contemporaries, and
the deal with issues that she would have encountered as a young, black female (such as rape and
subjugation). The contrast with Luries beloved Romantics is marked, and indicates that he and
Melanie possess different templates for behavior and morality. It seems clear that Melanie and
Lurie would not have the same perspective of their relationship. The writers that Melanie
references are hyper-aware of the issues surrounding gender and racial relations, and the power
dynamic that is evident in Melanie and Luries affair. Lurie, in contrast, is using a template that
assumes the male superiority and does not allow the female to have autonomy or maturity. In
fact, females do not have a voice in the Romantic literature that has shaped Luries ethos. The
language of eros that Lurie uses to defend his actions is unburdened by any analysis of those
victimized. Melanie is clearly more influenced by the rhetoric of the contemporary female
writers that she references than the themes of Romantic literature: she is starring in a comedy of
the new South Africa (23 Coetzee). Lurie describes finding the play, with its crude humor and

nakedly political intent, as hard to endure as before (191 Coetzee) when he sees it for a second
time; he is ultimately unable to separate himself from the rhetoric that he has spent a lifetime
immersed in, even if it has become irrelevant and impotent. Lurie knows that Melanie is not
affected by the Romantic literature that comprises his ethos: he wills the girl to be captivated
too. But he senses that she is not (15 Coetzee) yet he still tries, unable or unwilling to give up on
a rhetoric that has been his source of dominance for so long.
Exploitation Versus Autonomy
Lurie likes women to be available to men: he states this in a number of inexplicit ways.
His initial reluctance towards Bev is because her appearance does not seem to be crafted to
please the male gaze: He does not like women who make no effort to be attractive (72
Coetzee). There is an element of commodification involved in the male / female binary, and
females are meant to be a product for male consumption in the dominant hierarchal relationship.
Later on this relationship is echoed in the fate of Petrus sheep: sheep do not own themselves, do
not own their lives. They exist to be used, every last ounce of them, their flesh to be eaten, their
bones to be crushed and fed to poultry (123 Coetzee). This denial of the animals autonomy
parallels Luries insistence that: she does not own herself. Beauty does not own itself (16
Coetzee) when seducing Melanie. The hypocrisy of this statement is made clear when it is
paralleled with Luries antipathy towards Bev: he wishes that women would make themselves
attractive to men, yet with this attractiveness comes a loss of autonomy. This hypocritical
dualism is further complicated with regards to Lucy: Lurie describes his daughter as
attractive ... yet lost to men (76 Coetzee). Lurie views Lucys sexual orientation as a loss, as
she is not reducible to a commodity for male consumption. Lurie unthinkingly describes his
experience with Melanie in terms of nutrition: I was enriched by the experience (56 Coetzee).
The enrichment that Melanie gives him has echoes of the Romantic relationship with nature,
where Wordsworth and others would use nature as a healing and enriching force. In both cases,
nature and the female, the male is using a force that exists to nurture and provide. Lurie repeats
this sentiment when he is discussing his relationships with Melanie: every woman I have been
close with has taught me something about myself. To that extent they have made me a better

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person (70 Coetzee). Lucy replies by noting: I hope that you are not claiming the reverse as
well. That knowing you has turned your women into better people (70 Coetzee). Lucy is
pointing out the obvious: that this is not a reciprocal relationship. There are indications that Lucy
herself feels used by her father: Lurie wonders if his love has been oppressive, asking himself
has she found it [his love] a burden? Has it pressed down on her? Has she given it a darker
reading? (76 Coetzee). The question of a darker reading has several interpretations available;
either the reading could contain hints of sexual undertones, which would make the love
transgressive, or exploitative, as she is being used to nurture another organism.
The exploitative aspects of the male / female dualism or the human / nature dualism are
implicitly tied with the Romantic view of nature and femininity:
A romantic conception of both women and nature, the idea that women have special
powers and capacities of nurturance, empathy and closeness to nature, which are
unsharable by men and which justify their special treatment, which of course nearly
always turns out to be inferior treatment ... the antithesis of feminism, giving positive
value to the barefoot and pregnant image of women and validating their exclusion
from the world of culture and relegation to that of nature. (Plumwood 19)
To some extent Coetzee is promoting this view of femininity as being more connected to nature;
the barefoot and pregnant image of women fits Coetzees depiction of Lucy after she is
impregnated, and Lurie is described as feeling no sense of connection to the material earth: is it
his [David Luries] earth too? It does not feel like his earth ... It feels like a foreign land (197
Coetzee). However, Coetzee also gives Lucy her own narrative, removing her from a subjected
position in the narrative and culture that is symbolized by David Lurie. Lucy accuses her father
of behaving as though everything she does is part of the story of your [David Luries] life (198
Coetzee). Lucy is creating her own narrative and culture out of the wreckage that is postapartheid South Africa. In a sense, she, like her father, is in a state of disgrace, because of her
race and her class; however, she is willing to start again. She tells her father it is humiliating.
But perhaps that is a good point to start from again. Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept.
To start at ground level. With nothing (205 Coetzee). Because Lucy has never been truly

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comfortable within the sphere of dominant culture (as indicated by her behavior towards her
father, her removal to the farm, and her antagonism towards her fathers beliefs) she is able to
accept her position of disgrace. Lurie is more attached to the language of dominance and a
hierarchy that places him at the top: he notes that Lucys disgrace will lead to her living as
though she was a dog. Lucy agrees, saying: like a dog (205 Coetzee). This interaction parallels
an earlier scene that occurred before Lucy was raped, where Lucy argues that Lurie does not
approve of friends like Bev and Bill Shaw because they are not going to lead me [Lucy] to a
higher life. ... They are not going to lead me to a higher life, and the reason is that there is no
higher life (74 Coetzee). She argues in favor of flattening out the hierarchy, saying that they
should share some of our human privilege with the beasts (74 Coetzee). Lurie vehemently
disagrees, telling her that they should not lose perspective. We [humans] are of a different order
of creation than the animals. Not higher, necessarily, but different. So if we are going to be kind,
let it be out of simple generosity, not because we feel guilty or fear retribution (74 Coetzee).
Luries argument upholds the hierarchical nature of dominant language and reaffirms his
commitment to this hierarchy. Val Plumwood argues that:
racism, colonialism and sexism have drawn their conceptual strength from casting
sexual, racial and ethnic difference as closer to the animal and the body construed as
a sphere of inferiority, as a lesser form of humanity lacking the full measure of
rationality or culture. (Plumwood 15).
According to Plumwood, Luries insistence on a separation between humans and animals is one
of the forces which forms the structural apparatus of such socially corrosive separations such as
racism and sexism. Plumwood argues that it this conflation of females, nature, and non-white
races into a sphere of inferiority is partly the result of chance and of specific historical
evolution, and partly formed from a necessity inherent in the dynamic and logic of domination
between self and other, reason and nature (Plumwood 15). In effect, for there to be a dominant
culture and people, there must be an other. In order for David Lurie to maintain his image of
himself as a superior being, he must insist on the subjugation of other lifeforms. As a female,

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Lucy has experienced subjugation to some extent, despite her privilege, so she is able to
understand the corrosive effects of such segregation.
The Language of Rape
In Disgrace Coetzee manages to show both the physical actions that Lurie takes when
raping Melanie, and also narrate the linguistic justification he simultaneously presents to himself.
There are immediate indications that what is occurring is a rape: No, not now! she [Melanie]
says, struggling. My cousin will be back! ... But nothing will stop him (25 Coetzee). The use of
the word struggle and the proclamation that Lurie will not be stopped indicates that this is not a
mutually agreed upon interaction. This is further borne out by Luries subsequent description of
how Melanie does not resist. All she does is avert herself: avert her lips, avert her eyes (25
Coetzee). She is removing herself from the interaction that she is experiencing. Yet Lurie still
resists the labeling of the interaction by the correct terminology: Not rape, not quite that, but
undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core. As though she had decided to go slack, die within
herself for the duration, like rabbit when the jaws of the fox close on its neck (25 Coetzee).
Again Lurie reaches for the animal equivalent for his relationships with women in order to
describe the predator / victim dichotomy that defines his sexual interactions. It is notable that
Luries fascination with Byron occurs around the same time that he yields to the impulse to rape
one of his students. Byron, who (as Lucy quotes to her father) was said to be mad, bad, and
dangerous to know (77 Coetzee) by Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron, the ultimate child of Eros, was
disapproved of by his own society, but he ultimately died a young and romantic figure,
unencumbered by virtues that are commonly associated with age, virtues that Lurie also
professes to lack: he [Lurie] lacks the virtues of old: equanimity, kindliness, patience. But
perhaps these virtues will come as other virtues go: the virtue of passion, for instance (220
Coetzee). The supposition is that Eros prevents the practicing of other virtues.
When described in terms of desire, or eros, rape is almost justifiable: however, Lucy
negates this interpretation. She asks her father if rape is like murder, if it feels enjoyable: when
you trap her, get her under you, put all your weight on her - isnt it a bit like killing? Pushing the

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knife in; exiting afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in blood (158 Coetzee). Lucys
interpretation is strikingly similar to the image Lurie had of the rape while it was occurring: a fox
who is closing his jaws around the neck of a rabbit is clearly about to kill the rabbit. Lurie is also
aware of how his relations with Melanie must look to an outside observer: he imagines the jury
of his peers picturing a a great thick-boned male bearing down on a girl-child, a huge hand
stifling her cries (53 Coetzee). This image echoes the girl-child figure described in Lolita.
Davids self-identification with Humbert Humbert indicates that he fully conscious of the image
he must present, suggesting that he was self-aware enough to interpret his actions outside of the
Romantic conceptual framework that he uses as a defense. There are further indications that he
understands that rape is not the abstraction he claims. He recalls looking at a painting as a child
and wondering why rape was depicted in such abstract terms: what had all this attitudinizing to
do with what he suspected rape to be: the man lying on top of the woman and pushing himself
into her? (160 Coetzee). Lurie is described as possessing two images of rape: what he imagines
happened to his daughter, and the painting he saw as a child. However, he finds these instances
difficult to relate to fully: he can, if he concentrates, if he loses himself, be there, be the men,
inhabit them, fill them with the ghost of himself. The question is, does he have it in him to be the
woman? (160 Coetzee). His difficulty infiltrating the role of the female has much to do with his
refusal to see himself as a victim or in a subjugated position. In the same way that he resists any
efforts to treat him as a child during the trial that causes his removal from the university, he is
unable relate to the role of a victim even in an imaginary sense.
Hierarchy of Rhetoric
David Luries first experience with a loss of power comes when he is forced to limit his
teaching of literature (the traditional study of language in the European tradition) and begin
teaching courses such as communication. The removal of the literary echo-chamber that shaped
Lurie from the classroom indicates the beginning of a divide between Lurie and his students as
they embrace a rhetoric that is of their time. As his brand of rhetoric and culture falls out of
fashion Lurie finds himself increasingly unable to communicate with the younger generation: I
was having less and less rapport, I found, with my students. What I had to say they didnt care to

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hear (63 Coetzee). This lack of rapport that Lurie notices in his interactions with his students is
also visible in his interactions with Lucy: he is also being slowly released from his duties as a
father: Lucy tells him I cannot be a child forever. You cannot be a father forever. I know you
mean well, but you are not the guide I need, not at this time (161 Coetzee). Lurie is not only
impotent as a guide for Lucy; he is also impotent as guide for the emerging South Africa. The
most vital role of literatary study is to uphold and examine the rhetoric and themes of the
dominant culture, and Lurie is no longer an expert in the dominant culture. Lurie realizes that
his mind has become a refuge for old thoughts, idle, indignant, with nowhere else to go (72
Coetzee) and he feels isolated from the next generation: between Lucys generation and mine a
curtain seems to have fallen. I didnt even notice it when it fell (210 Coetzee). This disconnect,
or lack of communication, is even visible when he attempts to watch television: the commentary
alternates between Sotho and Xhosa; languages of which he understands not a word (75
Coetzee). Television, particularly sports television, is an indicator of the most pervasive language
of a culture; Luries inability to understand indicates that he is growing irrelevant, and also that
his language is growing irrelevant. Lurie himself believes that the English language is irrelevant
to the emerging South Africa: more and more he [Lurie] is convinced that English is an unfit
medium of the truth of South Africa (117 Coetzee). However, he also believes that this is the
result of historical abuses. He suggests that it is not the language itself that is at fault, but rather
the meanings that the language has been forced to provide, the mutilations that rhetoricians have
imposed to describe propaganda and atrocities and other historical injustices. Lurie suggests that
the language will be reborn after his death: by the time the big words come back reconstructed,
purified, fit to be trusted once more, he will be long dead (129 Coetzee). He believes that the
English language can be purified, but the reconstruction will be accomplished by a new
dominant culture, which will manipulate the language to its own ends. The problem with
language as Lurie uses it, at least according to Lucy, is that it describes abstractions: You keep
misreading me. Guilt and salvation are abstractions. I dont act in terms of abstractions (112
Coetzee). Lucy accuses him of misreading her, conflating herself with the literature that he

15

studies. His interpretations are faulty, not just because of the languages history, but also because
of the abstractions that form the conceptual framework for his examination of texts. Lurie
defends himself from his own claim that he is an ineffective teacher, saying he never aspired to
teach people how to live ... I [Lurie] wrote books about dead people (162 Coetzee). However, as
a professor of literature, he was in a position that is inherently linked with teaching people how
to live (162 Coetzee) and it is his failure to accept that responsibility and to adapt to the needs of
a changing population that ultimately causes his disgrace.
The end of Disgrace suggests that the new rhetoric will be created by alliances such as
the one formed by Lucy and Petrus, with the combining of white and black in the bodies of a
new generation, which will have a new language. Lurie believes that Petrus does not understand
the problematic undertones of the English language, and Lucy has rejected Lurie, insisting that
she does not need his guidance. Ultimately the language and literary echo-chamber that Lurie has
spent his lifetime living within the confines of is on the brink of extinction, while Lucys simpler
life-views will continue on in the body of her child because she is willing to accept the
responsibility of motherhood over the more abstract and ephemeral pursuits of intellectual and
urban life. Val Plumwood notes that a common trope of literature that deals with troubled times
to insist that:
It is the goodness of women which will save us. This is an argument, with its
Christian overtones of fall and feminine redemption, which appeared in Victorian
times as the view that womens moral goodness, their purity, patience, self-sacrifice,
spirituality and maternal instinct. (Plumwood 20)
This is the interpretation of the feminine role that emerges at the end of Disgrace. As
problematic as this interpretation of femininity is, it provides a clue as to the future of South
Africa. We, the reader, are left with two contrary points of reference: first, that Lucy, a lesbian
who attempted to leave the heterosexual dominant culture, was brutally raped and is now forced
to exist in an economically submissive state; and secondly, that she will be allowed a form of
autonomy in that she will have her own home and be able to raise her child how she desires. Her
child will either become part of the new dominant culture that is symbolized by

16

Petrus, or will adopt his or her mothers ideological beliefs and help build a society that is less
restricted by the binary of domination and subjugation.

Conclusion
Ultimately the definition of disgrace that is expressed in Disgrace is weakness.
Disgrace describes the slow decline of a dominant culture through the persona of David Lurie,
and in doing so shows that the ultimate disgrace is submitting. Melanies father articulates the
conflict that has occurred in David Luries life, noting how are the mighty fallen! (167
Coetzee). David Lurie does not see himself in the same light: he describes himself as being more
a figure from the margins of history than a mighty being. However, for Melanies father, and
for Lurie himself, Lurie is not entirely an autonomous being: rather, he is a vehicle for the
rhetoric of a dominant culture that has lost power. The implications of Luries disgrace is that it
highlights the position of all those who were born into a submissive role and then maintain this
role: females, members of oppressed races, and animals. The suggestion is that a hierarchy
imposes a position of disgrace on one half of the binary between a dominant entity and a
submissive entity. Disgrace begins with Lurie refusing to admit that he has done anything wrong,
insisting that repentance belongs to another world, to another universe of discourse (58
Coetzee) and ends with Lurie admitting that he is living with the consequences of his actions: I
am living it out day to day, trying to accept disgrace as my state of being (172 Coetzee). The
shift occurs not as the result of a personal change in Lurie, but a change in his position. The
discourse has shifted; he is now living in a world where his particular brand of dominance is no
longer in vogue and he is forced into a position of submission, or disgrace.

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Bibliography
Coetzee, J. M.. Disgrace. New York: Viking, 1999. Print.
Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism: The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge, 2004. Kindle.
Johnson, Robert. "Kant's Moral Philosophy." Stanford University. Stanford University, 23 Feb.
2004. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
Plumwood, Val. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1993. Print.
Warren, Karen. Ecological Feminist Philosophies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
Print..