The Body, Desire and Storytelling in Novels by J. M. Coetzee (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures)

Asserting that Coetzee’s representation of the body as subject to dismemberment counters the colonial representation of the other’s body as exotic and erotically-charged, this study inspects the ambivalence pertaining to Coetzee’s embodied representation of the other and reveals the risks that come with such contrapuntal reiteration. Through the study of the narrative identity of the colonial other and her/his body’s representation, the book also unveils the author’s own authorial identity exposed through the repetitive narrative patterns and characterization choices.

Olfa Belgacem is a teaching assistant at the University of Tunis. She has a PhD in English language and literature and is an Ecole Normale Supérieure graduate who has worked as an agrégée teacher at the University of Carthage. She is an active member of the research group "Languages and Cultural Forms" at ISLT and has participated in several national and international conferences. She has a published article in The International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies entitled "Revisiting the Colonial Text and Context: Parody in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe" and another one in "The International Conference Proceedings on Science, Art and Gender In the Global Rise of Indigenous Languages entitled "Taming the Indigenous Shrew: Torture and Narration as Possible Tools to Translate the Natives’ Silence in J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Foe." Dr. Belgacem has written other research papers on ethnic studies and identity politics as well as on education and didactics. She is currently working on the publication of some of these papers.