Book contents
- Photography and Film in the Fiction of J.M. Coetzee
- Frontispiece
- Photography and Film in the Fiction of J.M. Coetzee
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface and Overview
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Writing with Images
- Chapter 2 In the Darkroom of Fiction
- Chapter 3 Picturing Violence
- Chapter 4 The Camera in the Karoo
- Chapter 5 Waiting for the Barbarians
- Chapter 6 Writing through the Lens
- Chapter 7 The Ends of Photography
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Publications by J.M. Coetzee
- Other Publications
- Index
Chapter 5 - Waiting for the Barbarians
Ocular Ethics, Cinematic Dreaming and Film
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 January 2026
Book contents
- Photography and Film in the Fiction of J.M. Coetzee
- Frontispiece
- Photography and Film in the Fiction of J.M. Coetzee
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface and Overview
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Writing with Images
- Chapter 2 In the Darkroom of Fiction
- Chapter 3 Picturing Violence
- Chapter 4 The Camera in the Karoo
- Chapter 5 Waiting for the Barbarians
- Chapter 6 Writing through the Lens
- Chapter 7 The Ends of Photography
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Publications by J.M. Coetzee
- Other Publications
- Index
Summary
In the striking opening sentence of Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), the Magistrate’s attention is drawn to the dark sunglasses worn by his sinister military visitor, Colonel Joll: ‘I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire’.1 The Magistrate cannot see Joll’s eyes hidden behind the reflective glasses, pointing here, at the outset, to a larger problem of optical non-reciprocity in Coetzee’s third novel. The opening sentence’s problematisation of the pronomial ‘I’, which simultaneously also points to his unseeing eye, needs to be read in conjunction with the Magistrate’s enigmatic remark at the ending of the novel: ‘There is something staring me in the face, and still I do not see it’ (155).
Information
- Type
- Chapter
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- Photography and Film in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee , pp. 131 - 157Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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