Reading History, Writing Heresy: The Resistance of Representation and the Representation of Resistance in J. M. Coetzee's "Foe"

ho is the figured as antagonist by the title of J. M. Coetzee's Foe? Of this title-authorized by a prize-winning white South African writer, who is also a linguist, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of General Literature, a colonizer who refuses--one might well ask the question: in what mode of intellectual seduction does this title entitle the reader to participate? The first temptation, given Coetzee's stature and the status of South African literature as contiguous with the political, is the obvious and historical one: that this foe will be-again-those who design, uphold, live amidst, fail to dismantle, or fail to detach themselves from systemic racial dominance. And yes, the to which Coetzee alludes could so be described, but ...