There are two key moments in Foe that I feel provide a great degree of insight into the novel's thematic structure, as they seem to specifically inform one another. One of these is the novel's ending, which doesn't make much sense by itself, until looked at from the perspective of Susan's thoughts on the nature of her relationship with Cruso. As she's trying to figure out the meaning of their sexual encounter, she reflects on the way individual agency sometimes seems absent in retrospect, as she says:
"What are these blinks of an eyelid, against which the only defence is an eternal and inhuman wakefulness? Might they not be the cracks and chinks through which another voice, other voices, speak in our lives? By what right do we close our ears to them? The questions echoed in my head without answer" (30).
This seems to address the topic of whether or not the "other" can have a voice, answering in the affirmative as it asserts the presence of voices beyond the narrator's. What it suggests though is not just that the "other" can have a voice, but rather that the "other's" voice is always the voice we don't hear. This begs the question then of whether the subaltern is really even being silent or if it just communicates in ways beyond the awareness of an individual. This can also be taken to imply that the "other" is not necessarily that which we perceive to be the other, in fact it should always be that which is not perceived at all.
This is why when "Friday" speaks at the end of the novel, neither the reader or the narrator really hears anything. What they experience is more like some kind of unbreakable, all-encompassing force rather than words. This is further compounded by the fact that Friday's identity here is ambiguous. The Friday in the wrecked ship could not be the same Friday who scattered the petals which the narrator is presently swimming through, as Friday is presently "half-buried" in sand (157). I'm also relatively certain that this whole scenario is some kind of dream, either that or our narrator is Aquaman or has gills. Either way, this Friday seems to specifically be a representation of Friday drawn from someone else's perceptions of Friday. Essentially this means what we get from Friday's "voice" is just some vague articulation of meaning as an incomprehensible yet present force, much in the same mode as that in which many of the other characters perceive the meaning of Friday and his actions. Thus, this notion of Friday as the possessor of some kind of truth is revealed to be an imaginary notion in the mind of the narrator; but at the same time Friday has clearly succeeded in subverting the agency of the narrator as he has been inserted as a false identity within the the symbolic construct of the narrator's world. This subversion of agency aligns with Susan's earlier remarks that it is in these lapses of agency that we experience these unheard voices, that we experience the unperceived.
I found the connection you made between the “sexual encounter” and the novel’s end to be quite evocative. There is a well established literary trope that constructs sex as beyond words, as representing a more intimate connection between people than can be expressed in any other way, as unrepresentable, as transcendent, as taking you beyond and outside yourself (D. H. Lawrence comes to mind here). In his essay on pornography and censorship, Coetzee himself suggests that sex is the place where the veneer of civilization breaks down, where people lose control.
ReplyDeleteNow one could dismiss these kinds of representations as romantic nonsense, or call for the “end of the monarchy of sex” (Foucault) that sees sex as somehow signaling the “real” truth or the true you. But the fact remains that sex acts are always highly metaphorical in Foe and so I find quite compelling your suggestion about the connection between the sexual encounter and Coetzee’s intimation that we may not know how to hear the voice of the Other, or that this voice may take a form that we haven’t learnt how to “read.” The quote you give in your second paragraph immediately reminded me of the last line of the novel, where whatever issues from Friday’s mouth is described as beating “against my eyelids, against the skin of my face.” Is this a crazy connection to make? Crazy or not, it does suggest that there is a place of communication beyond words, that language is inadequate to convey the fullness of experience and consciousness, since (especially if you are a postmodernist, as Coetzee is) language not only describes but also circumscribes reality. In the case of Foe, it cannot but recreate the realities of colonialism and authorial patriarchy. So the novel has to end in a place beyond language.
The irony, of course, is that Coetzee is a wordsmith, and has to (try to) use language to evoke this place beyond language.