ABSTRACT
J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983) is a novel that chronicles the fate of a speechless protagonist, Michael K. The novel’s difficulty lies in that it does not offer a clear political message in relation to apartheid or race relations, despite being written at the height of apartheid tensions. Michael’s gestures – particularly the planting of the pumpkin seeds – prove to be intractable. This chapter explores the political debate that surrounded the text, especially the accusation that the novel failed to acknowledge Coetzee’s full responsibility towards the political situation. The chapter suggests that using Adorno’s essays such as “Commitment” and “Lyric Poetry and Society” allows us to construct an alternative understanding of the engaged artwork – one in which a text may be considered political even if it seems manifestly apolitical. Through Adorno the political aspect of Life & Times of Michael K – a text deliberately constructed by Coetzee to be discursively ambiguous and obfuscatory – therefore becomes apparent.
