Coetzee's Interpellations

Abstract

Coetzee’s novels, Waiting for the Barbarians and Elizabeth Costello, portray a complex interaction with ethical conflicts. The ethical conflicts in Coetzee’s novels are deconstructed using a close reading based on Althusser’s interpellation. The use of interpellation is geared towards illustrating how personal ideology is raised from the subconscious and comes into conflict with the outside world. This thesis claims that interpellation is a key feature in creating intersubjectivity and thereby serves a s a means to mediate personal and outside ideologies.