ABSTRACT
A less idealized representation of bodies characterizes some colonial writings where bodies are marked by physical affliction and framed within colonial stereotypes as non-normative, excessive and therefore threatening. In colonial writings, the body of the other is framed as a “not white/not quite” eroticized and exoticized body. The body becomes whole, a Body with organs that transcend their mere physical functions to acquire symbolical ones. A comparative study between the representation of the body in the fiction of J. M. Coetzee as a white writer representing the black and oppressed citizens of South Africa and maybe the world, on the one hand, and the body’s textualization in the writings of his black counterparts, the black writers of South Africa, both male and female, on the other hand, would have been of much interest. Coetzee’s readers who are keen on categorization on the basis of political and historical commitment should look for other tools than the deconstructive reading of his texts.
