LIFE AND TIMES OF MICHAEL K: DECONSTRUCTING THE MYTH OF THE ‘OTHER’

Abstract

Human society is formed and evolved with people of homogeneous and heterogeneous sects. South Africa was no exception to the truth. Under the clutches of Britishers, it was shaped as a nation of the native South Africans, the white South Africans and the white people of colonial authority. Hence, the South African society experienced the hierarchical power structure in which the white colonial authoritative people were on the top of the power position with wealth and dominance, the native South Africans were at the bottom with poverty and unemployment, and the Afrikaners were in the mid-way experiencing ‘inbetweenness’ to both the white people and the native South Africans. The dominance granted to the white authoritative people from the top position gave space for imposing their own culture over the native culture. Life & Times of Michael K (1983) is about the life and journey of Michael K. This novel also depicts the situation of South Africa, in the time of an imaginary civil war, during apartheid movement. Coetzee re-figures, revisits, and rewrites the ills of imperialism by interrogating how the paradigmatic circumstances one is born into effect the production and performance of identity as a social construct.