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Coetzee's Dusklands: The Mythic Punctum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Debra A. Castillo
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Abstract

The novels of the South African writer J. M. Coetzee are frequently criticized for their lack of specific application to the social and political concerns of his country. In Dusklands, the first and least studied of these texts, the author makes an implicit response to the controversial and weakly defined question of the political value of literary works in postcolonialist discourse. For Coetzee, the inherently masculinist, aggressively terrorist underpinnings of the very concept of value urgently require demystifying; for the purposes of this paper, Roland Barthes's distinction between studium and punctum provides the analytic key.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 105 , Issue 5 , October 1990 , pp. 1108 - 1122
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1990

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