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The worm in the apple: wretched bonds in J. M. Coetzee’s >Disgrace< [application of Fromm's theories to art]

  • Coetzee’s novel >Disgrace< addresses the question of dysfunctional inter-human relationships and explores the themes of domination, subjection, and character distortion in the context of the post-apartheid South Africa. In fact, this paper holds, >Disgrace< fictionalizes Coetzee’s concerns about the social deformation that springs from distorted relationality. According to Erich Fromm’s social thought, the apartheid regime represented an insane society based on sadistic domination and masochistic submission. It systematized sadomasochistic patterns of interpersonal relatedness and excluded horizontal relationships based on love and mutual care. Disgrace shows that how the same dynamics of intersubjective relationships still feature in the >new< South Africa. A parallel is, therefore, drawn between Coetzean ideas about deformed relationality and social deformation and Frommian symbiotic relatedness and sociocultural insanity. The apartheid’s spirit of insanity lingers in the post-apartheid period since its modes of human interactions persist. The transition from the earlier racist system to a genuine democracy, the novel suggests, sounds impossible unless love replaces sadomasochistic relationality.

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Metadaten
Author:Hossein Kermatfar, Maryam Beyad
Parent Title (English):African Identities, Vol. 16: No. 3 (2018), pp. 318-332. [Online ISSN 1472-5851] [doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2018.1439731]
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2018
Release Date:2024/04/04
Format:to purchase via publisher
IdNo:Kermatfar_H_and_Beyad_M_2018
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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