What is it about?
The article explains how the writer J. M. Coetzee uses silence as a way to show resistance into office novels, Life and Times of Michael K and Foe. It focuses on characters who live under systems of control created by colonialism and apartheid. Instead of fighting back with words or violence, these characters resist by refusing to speak, explain themselves, or take part in systems that try to control them. The articles shows that silence is not emptiness or weakness. In these novels, silence is a choice. By staying silent, the characters protect themselves from being judged, classified, or spoken for by those in power.
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Why is it important?
This article is important because it changes how we think about resistance. Resistance is often understood as protest, speech, or action. This article shows that refusing to speak can also be powerful, especially when speaking would mean giving control to oppressive systems. It is also important because it questions who has the right to tell someone else's story. Colonial writing often claimed to speak for colonized people. This article shows how Coetzee challenges that tradition by creating characters whose silence stops others from taking their stories and turning them into something they are not. Finally, the article helps readers understand apartheid not only as a political system, but also as a system that controlled language, identity, and meaning.
Perspectives
This article offers a clear and convincing explanation of how silence works in Coetzee's writing. One of its main strengths is that it treats silence as something active and meaningful, not as a sign of failure or helplessness. The discussion of Michael K shows how quite refusal and withdrawal can challenge authority without direct confrontation. The analysis of Friday in Foe is a especially strong, as it explains how his silence prevents others from owning or rewriting his history. Instead of being powerless, Friday silence puts pressure on those who want him to speak. Overall, this article is valuable because it explains complex ideas in a way that connects literature to real experiences of oppression. It helps readers to see how Coetzee uses simple actions—such as not speaking— to question power, control, and the act of representation itself.
Jafar Baba
Szegedi Tudomanyegyetem
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Breaking the Walls of Representation: Silence and the Inversion of Binaries in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe and Life and Times of Michael K, December 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004741812_010.
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