Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

presence show s. aim relentlessly to suppress the other as an inferior, as a supplement.
their structures of signification can also be rearti culated differently" (10) .
In his novel Foe, J. M. Coetzee not only interrogaleS the discursive field of
eurocentric ideo logy by reartieu1ating and revising Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe. but he
also seizes the apparatus of value-ceding and reverses the dialectic of imperialism
surrounding empire/ civilizati on building . Unlike Defoe' s character, Coetzee's Cruso
(without the e)22 does not keep a diary, tabulate the days. clear the wilderness,
build a boat or cul tivate anything . Cce tzee's Frida y hasbeen cas tra ted and his tongue
cut off to represent the violence inflicted on those whose voices are silenced by
oppression.
The patriarchal hierarchy, propagated by colonization and Defoe's Robinson
Crusoe, is subvc:rted by Coetzoe in the character of Susan Barto n who takes ownership
of most of the novel 's narrative. and custody of Frida y after Cruse's death . The two
meanin gs of "foe," Defoe' s patronymic name , and the denotation for "enemy, " are
used to undermine the authority of Defoe's story . Coettec has often said thac " Histo ry
is nothin g but a certain kind of story that peop le agree to tell each other ." 23 He
echoes vice's observation that men maketheir own history, and that what they can
know is what the y have made. Coetzee captures the idea of history making in Foe by
re- interp retin g Defoe's story. Like Cugoanc, Coetzee writes in the style of the earl y
nineteenth-eenrury travel/autob iographical novel . Coe tzee dem onstrates the intersection
between feminist and posteolonial lheories by having the character of Susan keep a
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