AustLit

'Deconstructing colonization and the colonizing discourse is a long and continuing process. Many intellectuals participated, and still participate, in this noble mission. However, "Waiting for the Barbarians" is a literary work that resists the colonial ideology through raising the colonizer's, and consequently the reader's, awareness of the pervasive ideology of dehumanization; it is this ideology that makes possible the severe torture of the prisoners without the torturers' feeling or awareness of their criminal deeds. This ideology of dehumanization and the struggle against its domination is manifested by the character of the protagonist who, as a representative of the colonizer, experiences a gradual process of confusion, introspection, and remorse that enables the reader to experience closely, rather than merely witness from a distance, an exemplary process of self-questioning. This theme of self-questioning is one of the main themes of Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. The novel creates in us an ability to question the different ideologies that enslaved us unconsciously, especially at our modern time when It seems that we became so obsessed with materialism and our existential needs that risking one's physical safety or financial security to stand up for one's principles will never be an issue for most people, especially those living in what was known as colonizing countries or, in modern terminology, the developed or first world. Thus, the aim of this paper is to investigate how the novel creates in its reader a revival of a moral and ultimately political sensibility that is usually inhibited by the ideology of dehumanization.' (Publication abstract)

'How does music transcend individual experience? Is music the filter to purify everything? How does everything in the poet become music? Such questions are raised, now and then, by the conscious reader of poetry in general and that of the Australian poet Thomas W. Shapcott in particular. My present research-paper attempts to present an answer for these questions via probing the individuality of Shapcott's poetic experience and how does the poet's personal and experimental musicality as an artistic motif and aesthetic perspective play a key role in purifying language of its lies and its daily impurities. In the first place, my account is apt to find an aesthetic meaning for the action of transcending the individual experience in selected poems written by Shapcott. The philosophical and ritual thought of musicality is interplayed with the aesthetic power of poetry. Both aesthetic energies stem from the individual experience of the poet to transcend the borders of individuality and being absorbed and saturated in the wide pot of human universality. In other words, the poem after being filtered and purified musically and aesthetically is no longer an individual experience owned by its producer only, rather it becomes a human experience for its conscious readers. Music as a motif and meaning, regardless of its technical significance, is controversial in Shapcott's poetic diction. Music, here, is not a mere artistic genre; rather it is a ritualistic and philosophical thought. The paper is to investigate how Shapcott's musicality is constructed on aesthetics of balance and conformity in poetry and life.' (Publication abstract)