PostcolonialismLiterature:The concept of the Self and the Other in Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians

Abstract

The present dissertation examines one of the principal elements in postcolonial literature: the encounter with the other. Commonly, postcolonial criticism stresses the wide differences existing between ‘the self and the other’ in terms of culture.As such,it highlights the hierarchical relations between cultures,i.e. the culture of the coloniser as the predominant one and that of the indigenous people, who all too often assume the task of rescuing it from obliteration.Within this vein of thought, an attempt has been made to educe the concept of the self and the other in John Maxwell Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians (1980).Through a thematic analysis of the novel, it has been revealed that the construction of the other as primitive, uncivilized, strange and hostile is necessary for the existence of the self. Besides, the novel- being a sample of postcolonial literature- serves a voice of the powerless, homeless and poorest members of indigenous people.