타자의 부름을 기다리며: 존 쿳시의 『야만인을 기다리며』에 나타난 기다림의 미학

Abstract

This paper examines the question of alterity in the literature of contemporary South African writer J. M. Coetzee, focusing on Waiting for the Barbarians. The novel serves as an important text in the study of Coetzee’s postcolonial writing. Drawing upon Emmanuel Lévinas’s view that the traditional Western philosophy is a form of totalitarianism that has oppressed ‘the Other,’ this study argues that Coetzee’s narrative structure works to deconstruct hierarchy and the dominant discourse. It is noteworthy that self-reflexive writing of the white male narrator, the Magistrate, offers us a depth of insight into how the narrative and dignity of oppressed people could be restored. In spite of the narrator’s failure to restore the silence of the Others, the aesthetics of failure not only urge us to eliminate prejudice against the Others, but also lead us to wait for the call of ‘the invisible,’ in readiness to dictate their silenced story. The aesthetics of infinite waiting develop into the ethics of ‘open’ writing to ‘closed’ the Others in the text.