Waiting For The Barbarians

Truth, Reconciliation, and the Restoration of the State: Coetzee's "Waiting for the
Barbarians"
Author(s): Troy Urquhart
Source: Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 1-21
Published by: Hofstra University
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Truth,Reconciliation,
and the Restoration of the State:
Coetzee's Waitingfor theBarbarians
TroyUrquhart
I never wished it for the barbarians that they should have the
history of Empire laid upon them.
-J. M. Coetzee (WaitingfortheBarbarians151)
InWriting History,Writing Trauma,Dominick LaCapra observes that the

South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) "was in its
own way a traumarecovery center" (43) providing a socialmechanism for
South Africa towork through the trauma caused by apartheid.LaCapra's
observation suggests that theTRC offers amethod throughwhich the
rupture caused by centuries of domination under a system rooted in racial
and cultural inequalitymight be healed by reconciling the oppressedwith
the oppressors.The motto on theTRC's home page, "Truth.The Road
to Reconciliation," summarizes the commission's ideology.The singular
truthhere implies that an empirically verifiable truth can be found, and
the juxtaposition of "The Road toReconciliation" with "Truth"suggests
that the publication or voicing of truthwill lead directly to reconcilia
tion in South Africa, perhaps even that for theTRC, "Truth" and "The
Road toReconciliation" have become equivalent terms.TheTRC's goals,
however, are implicitlymore ambitious than either LaCapra or its internet
home page indicate.The TRC is a part of South Africa's Department of
Justice and Constitutional Development, so one of its aims from the out
set has been to achieve justice in South Africa. Exposing truth, it implies,
brings not only reconciliation but also a sort ofjustice.
Literature
Twentieth-Century 52.1 Spring 2006 1

TroyUrquhart
Although it predated the establishment of theTRC by 15 years,J.M.

Coetzee's Waitingfor theBarbariansanticipates and challenges theTRC's
conflation of the quest for truthwith the quest for justice.Like theTRC,
much of the criticism of Coetzee's novel sees exposing the experiences of
the oppressed as a sort ofjustice, but I see in the novel a pointed critique:
the state'sre-membering of the often fragmentaryevidence of oppression
amounts not to justice in the reparativesense but rather to an expedient, a
way to secure political legitimacy.Waitingfor theBarbariansarticulates the
problem of justice in South Africa and challenges the basic premises of
theTRC by exploring, first, the difficulty of establishing the truth about
the experience of the oppressed and, second, themanipulation of their
voices to protect the interestsof the state.
Something called restorative justice

[T]he perpetrator ... should be given the opportunity to be
reintegrated into the community he has injured by his offense.
-Desmond Mpilo Tutu (55)
The justice that theTRC seeks for South Africa does not attempt to heal
the victim at the expense of the perpetrator.Rather, theTRC's goal is to
heal the perpetrator alongside the victim, tomake the perpetrator a viable
part of a new South African society that values both the victim and the
perpetrator equally.According to the Promotion of National Unity and
Reconciliation Act of 1995, the legislation that established theTRC, its
stated purpose is fourfold.' First, theTRC is charged with creating "as
complete a picture as possible" of the atrocities of apartheid by recording
both "the perspectives of the victims and themotives and perspectives of
the persons responsible" for those atrocities. Second, theTRC serves to
facilitate the "granting of amnesty" to thosewho "make full disclosure"of
their involvement in human rights violations.Third, theTRC is to restore
the "human and civil dignity" of the victims of atrocities "by granting
them an opportunity to relate their own accounts" and "by recommend
ing reparationmeasures." Finally, theTRC is to construct a narrative of
apartheidbased on its findings thatprovides "ascomprehensive an account
as possible" and recommends "measures to prevent the future violations
of human rights" (2.3.1).Although part of its task is tomake recommen
dations about reparations, theTRC's primary concern is to foster social

Truth, Reconciliation, and the Restoration of the State:Waitingfor theBarbarians
healing that reconciles the divisions in South African society and allows
it to carry on as a unified state.This social healing, in theTRC's view,
constitutes justice, a new type ofjustice thatArchbishop Desmond Tutu,
the chair of theTRC, terms "restorativejustice" (54).2
Clearly, part of Tutu's goal in pursuing restorative justice is to avoid
the violence historically inherent both in the traditional exacting of
justice and in decolonization. TheWretched of theEarth, Frantz Fanon's
manifesto forAfrican revolution, declares that "decolonization is always
a violent phenomenon" (35), and it is this violence thatTutu fears.3He
claims that"Wemake themistake of conflating all justice into retributive
justice,whereas there is something called restorativejustice, and this is the
justice we have chosen" (qtd. inRyan). The central concern of this type
of justice, asTutu defines it, is
the healing of breaches, the redressingof imbalances, the restora
tion of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitateboth the
victim and the perpetrator,who should be given the opportu
nity to be reintegrated into the community he has injured by his
offense. (54-55)
Tutu's goal of restoring "broken relationships" implies an Edenic South
African past. It romantically suggests both that a return to this prelapsar
ian state is possible and that such a return can come about through the
TRC's work. Describing thiswork as "restorative,"then, is an attempt to
revise the history of South Africa and thereby to revise public opinion
about the South African state itself.
Narrative can help cure trauma,of course, but the victim whom
theTRC is attempting to heal is not the individual traumatized under
apartheid but the South African state.While we should surely draw a
distinction between the present South African government and its op
pressive predecessor,we should also acknowledge that the former oppres
sors in South Africa still hold a significant portion of the nation's capital,
and that an attempt to redistribute this capitalwould risk inverting the
old hierarchy.The new South African government thus redefines justice
as "restorative" rather than retributive or reparative to avoid becoming
another version of the hierarchal political system it is replacing. In this
light, theTRC's primary task, to "promote national unity and reconcili
ation," is telling, for it suggests thatwhat theTRC is establishingwith
its restorative justice is the power and political legitimacy of the South

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African government, andwhat theTRC is healing is not the individuals

who have suffered under apartheid but the South African state.
Critics of Waitingfor theBarbariansgenerally see the novel as trying
to evade the issueof retributivejustice by erasing the distinction between
Empire and barbarian,between the oppressor and the victim.Much of the
commentary, in fact, reproduces theTRC's tendency to see this erasure-a
goal of restorativejustice-as justice that serves the interestsof the victim.
David Attwell posits thatWaitingfor theBarbariansallows for the hope of
a reconstruction of the subject outside the Empire/barbarian dichotomy.
Simnilarly,MichaelValdez Moses looks at the novel as an expression of the
desire to escape this dichotomy, proposing that it looks forward to a new
ethical order founded on Edenic principles:4Coetzee "offers ... an unre
alized and unrecognized possibility thathe styles an 'AfricanEden,' equally
available towhite and black" (125).This Eden anticipates theTRC's goal
of transcending the "conflicts and divisions of the past." It "rehabilitate[s]
both the victim and the perpetrator" (Tutu 55), offering a redefinition of
the power relations of society throughwhat Tutu calls restorativejustice.
Like theTRC's vision of a reconciled South African state,Attwell's and
Moses's Edenic vision associates a pluralistic society,where each person's
voice is given equal value,with justice.
SusanVanZanten Gallagher's reading of Waitingfor theBarbariansalso
finds hope in restorativejustice and the narrativization of oppression. She
suggests that truth telling and giving the victim a voice constitute justice.
Seeing Coetzee searching for texts thatweave together fragments of the
victims' histories and thereby expose the truth about their suffering at the
hands of Empire, she finds thatWaitingfor theBarbariansreveals"the hope
that in storytelling-impotent, opaque, and uncertain as itmight be- op
pression and torturemay be unveiled" (281). In Gallagher's reading, be
cause the voice of the storyteller temporarily creates themoral center that
theworld lacks (281nl), narrative can be used "to advancemoral truths."
By constructing the history of the oppressed from fragmentary evidence,
the storyteller who speaks of violence and oppression reconstructs an
ethical order.The storyteller becomes a "temporary father-interpreter"
(280) for the oppressed and, in theTRC's terms, creates "as complete
a picture as possible" of oppression. Gallagher'smodel of storytelling is
analogous to Tutu's model of restorative justice, for in creating amoral
center the storyteller restores the dignity of both the victim and himself.
But her suggestion that the victim is restored through a "temporary fa

Truth,Reconciliation,and theRestorationof theState:WaitingfortheBarbarians
ther-interpreter" revealsone of the troubling assumptions of theTRC's

restorativejustice: the truly oppressed cannot speak for themselves, so it
is only through the fatherhood of restorativejustice that their voices can
be heard.5
Gallagher's reading fails to take into account how the state struc
tures, constrains, and values the voices of the oppressed. In a discussion
of postcolonial India,Peter van der Veer points out that a true expres
sion of violence cannot be articulated, for the victim lacks a history.The
narrative of the victim's counterhistory is always created by and in the
service of the state,he argues, and the evidence provided by the victim
isnecessarily fragmented, giving us "no plot, no narrative,only leads that
go nowhere" (199).While the oppressive state sometimes goes to great
lengths to destroy these leads,more frequently the fragmentsbecome uni
fied by weaving them into the narrative of an approved counterhistory.
On the history of India,van derVeer writes:
[M]ore often than not thememory of violent events isnot

obliterated or suppressed;rather,such events are remembered as
fragmentsof a storywhose unitary, rational subject is the liberal
nation-state. History is a teleology leading ... to the liberated . . .
nation-state. Suffering and pain acquiremeaning from the larger
story of progress;otherwise theywould be "senseless,"incoher
ent,without anymeaning for the larger story. (189)
The historical memory of violence is not repressed by the oppressive
statebut constructed as something that serves itspurpose, something that
includes the oppressed in "the largerstory"of the state'shistory.Coetzee's
novel suggests that the counterhistory leading to the restorativejustice of
theTRC does not effect justice but avoids it. Indeed, in its final report the
TRC acknowledges that the "view that the Committee was'perpetrator
friendly'was ... to an extent understandable and even unavoidable" (84).
Restorative justice does not heal the victim but the state,whitewashing
history through a search for truth that, ultimately, allows people to get
awaywith murder.
Waitingfor theBarbariansrecognizes that being allowed a voice con
stitutes neither equality nor justice, and that, as van derVeer reminds us,
the search for truth is necessarily self-interested.The novel's narrator, the
Magistrate, wants to serve the interestsofjustice even if itmeans he is the
"One JustMan" (111)who opposes Empire, and his search for justice is

Troy Urquhart
anchored in his search for knowledge about the experience of the victims
of Empire. He collects artifacts of those silenced by Empire, fragments
of their experiences, and even though he cannot read them, his desire
to oppose the Empire by giving a voice to the oppressed is so intense
that,when given the opportunity, he pretends to construct their history.
Gallagher's description of theMagistrate as a "father-interpreter"who
can give the absent voice of the victim a "temporary presence" (285) sug
gests the hope that restorativejusticewill work, that justicewill prevail in
South Africa, yet it accounts for neither the investment of theMagistrate
in his own act of interpretation nor the impossibility of his accurately
interpreting the voice of the oppressed.
In attempting to speak for the barbarians, what the Magistrate
achieves isnot reparationbut penance, not justice but justification of his
own complicity in the atrocities of Empire.6 He wants to believe he is
motivated by a desire to serve justice but does not acknowledge the desire
to expunge his own guilt. In imagining that he can read the fragmentary
evidence of Empire's victims and in attempting to read themark of Em
pire on the body of the barbariangirl he prostitutes, he confuses penance
with reparation, confuses his desire to heal himself with a desire to heal
the victims. As he seeks restorative rather than retributive justice, he sup
presses his own complicity in the violent oppression of others.
Penance and reparation

[T]here must always be a place for penance and reparation.
The contrast inWaitingfor theBarbariansbetween theMagistrate's search

for truth and thatof Colonel Joll prefigures the contrastbetween the truth
seeking of theTRC and that of the South African state under apartheid.
Joll is the quintessential torturer,seeking truth for his own ends by violent
means, while theMagistrate iswell-intentioned and apparently nonvio
lent, seeking truth as a way to escape the injustice of the Empire and
thereby to effect justice.7Both Joll and theMagistrate want to hear the
voice of those the Empire considers barbarians,but while Joll identifies
"barbarian language" as the screamsof torture victims (119), theMagis
trate attempts to speak for the barbarian by translatingbarbarian experi
ence into the languageof Empire.The most significant of theMagistrate's

attempts to speak for the other is his pretended translation of wooden

slips at the insistence of Colonel Joll.The Magistrate, who presides over
a town on the border of the Empire, has excavated these slips from the
ruins of a nearby city,presumably the ruins of an earlier empire thatwas
destroyed in the early days of the present one, and he spends hours try
ing to decipher the meaning of the characters inscribed on them. He
discovers a "cache of wooden slips on which are painted characters in a
script" indecipherable to him and "set[s] about collecting all the slips [he]
can" (14-15). He longs to understand something about the experience of
those destroyed by Empire, and he collects these fragments as evidence,
trying to decipher theirmeaning, thinking first that they are characters
in a script, thenwondering if they "might in fact be elements of a picture
whose outline would leap atme if I struck on the right arrangement: a
map of the land of the barbarians in olden times, or a representation of
a lost pantheon" (15). In trying to understand themeaning of the slips,
he manipulates them, sometimes "reading the slips in amirror, or tracing
one on top of another, or conflating half of one with half of another."
He cannot understand the barbarian in barbarian terms, so he changes
and distorts themarkings in an attempt tomake them comprehensible in
terms of his own knowledge and experience.8
While theMagistrate seems to recognize his inability to comprehend
the victims of Empire, he laterpretends to read thewooden slips in order
to pit himself againstJoll and thereby justify his own position. Late in the
novel,Joll confronts theMagistrate with thewooden slips and demands
an explanation of their contents, implying that the slips contain messages
passed between theMagistrate and the barbarians. In spite of his earlier
fascinationwith them, theMagistrate still does not know what message,
if any, they contain.He does "not even know whether to read from right
to left or from left to right" and has "no ideawhat they stand for" (108),
but he "runs [his finger] along the line of characters from right to left,"
pretending to read.What he saysdescribes his own experience. His per
formance quickly turns into a catalogue of the atrocities committed by
Joll and hismen in theMagistrate's town: the dead body of the imagined
writer's son isdescribed as "sewn in a sheet," a stitch through each eyelid
and its feet "swollen and broken" (109).The Magistrate constructs this
tale based on his first-hand knowledge of the Empire's treatment of the
barbarians,not on any knowledge of thewriter of the slips.He conflates
the experience of one barbarianwith that of another and assigns the

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experience to a third,combining a description of the death of a prisoner

whose body is sewn in a sheet early in the novel with the hobbling and
blinding of the barbarian girl who becomes his mistress.9Arguably the
Magistrate's "reading" is a form of political protest, but he speaks for the
oppressed only by looking "in amirror" at his own experiences and by
"conflating half of one [barbarian]with half of another" (15).He does
not-indeed, cannot-speak for thewriter of the slips,whose experience
remains entirely unknown to him.
Critics have tended to approach this scene with varying degrees of
hope that the victims of Empire can be represented.Reading the scene
through Derrida, Lance Olsen asserts that the "wood slips form an ab
sence which may be supplemented in an endless number of ways, cut
off from responsibility,from authority, an emblem of orphaned language,
nothing more than a productivemechanism" (53). For Olsen, theMagis
tratebecomes free from the injustice of Empire in the act of interpreta
tion, for he escapes the rigid signification of Empire thatwould insist on
a single meaning for the slips.The Magistrate's position seems morally
superior to-and perhaps more productive than-Joll's, Olsen argues,
for Joll is trapped by his belief that each signifiermust contain a single,
fixedmeaning, while theMagistrate, even if he feels "despairbefore the
arbitrarinessof language" (55), allows the signifier tomove freely among
interpretations.Joll is confined by the rigidity of the Empire's law,which
fixes the field of signifiers,while theMagistrate is free of the confines of
Empire-linguistically, at least-and this freedom allows him to gain some
knowledge or understanding of the victim's experience.
Responding to Olsen, Gallagher suggests, aswe have seen, that the
Magistrate becomes a "temporary father-interpreter" for the barbarian
language. She proposes that part of Coetzee's project in Waitingfor the
Barbariansis "to find texts transparentenough to carrymeaning" (280)
and that theMagistrate's translationof thewooden slips suggests that"op
pression and torturemay be unveiled" through storytelling (281).The fact
that the signifier is open tomultiple interpretations, she argues, does not
make itmeaningless; because theMagistrate continues to use language
even when facedwith its arbitrariness,language can be used "to advance
moral truths."
Just as theTRC believes it can narrate the events of apartheid,Ol
sen and Gallagher find in theMagistrate's interpreting thewooden slips
the possibility of representing the victims' experience. But this finding

does not recognize that his interpretation is self-interested.Certainly the

wooden slipsmight have contained meaning in the language of their
original writer, but allwho spoke that language are dead, permanently
silenced by Empire, just as thosewho have been most oppressed by the
system of apartheid in South Africa have been permanently silenced.
When theMagistrate speaks for thewriter of the slips, the experiences
he narrates are his own.The problem of his performance reproduces the
problem of representation articulated by Gayatri Spivak as the distinction
between vertretenand darstellen:
the shifting distinctions between representationwithin the state
and political economy, on the one hand, andwithin the theory
of the Subject, on the other,must not be obliterated. Let us
consider the play of vertreten("represent"in the first sense) and
darstellen("re-present" in the second sense).... (275-76)
Representation in the first sense, vertreten,denotes political proxy, speak

ing on behalf of the other,while the second, darstellen,denotes amimetic
re-presentationor portrait.To "confront [the subaltern] isnot to represent
(vertreten)them but to learn to represent (darstellen)ourselves" (288-89),
Spivakwrites, and this is certainly the case in theMagistrate's attempt to
represent thewriter of thewooden slips.Since he cannot read the slips,
he cannot represent thewriter in terms of political proxy (vertreten), and
thus his reading can only be a re-presentation (darstellen) of his own expe
riences.This isnot to say thathe cannot discover the "moral truths" that
Gallagher seeks,but any truth he findswill be his own, and not the truth
of thewriter of thewooden slips.He cannot narrate the experience of
the other, and he cannot restore the dignity of the other.This scene thus
reveals the problem that underlies restorativejustice: it is theMagistrate,
the speaking agent of the state-and not the silenced victim-whose
dignity is restored.
In Spivak's influentialdiscussion about the possibility of speakingof or
for the subaltern, she critiques Deleuze's and Foucault's claims thatwhile
there is no single, complete narrative that can articulate the experience
of the other, that experience can be understood by a "persistent critique"
(272).That is,we can come to know a truth, if not the truth, about the
other. In response to Deleuze's claim that "Reality iswhat actually hap
pens in a factory, in a school, in barracks, in a prison, in a police station"
(qtd. in Spivak 275), Spivakwrites:

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This foreclosing of the necessity of the difficult taskof coun

terhegemonic ideological production has not been salutary.It
has helped positivist empiricism-the justifying foundation of
advanced capitalist neocolonialism-to define its own arena as
'concrete experience," "what actually happens' ......Neither
Deleuze nor Foucault seems aware that the intellectualwithin
socialized capital,brandishing concrete experience, can help
consolidate the international division of labor. (275)
At the center of Spivak's criticism is the inescapable ideological position
of the intellectual who attempts to construct the narrative of the op
pressed, the intellectualwho weaves together the fragmentary evidence
of the experience of the other, and she accuses Foucault andDeleuze of
"systematically ignor[ing] ... their own implication in intellectual and
economic history" (272).The intellectualwho constructs such a narrative
does not liberate the oppressed, for the narrative serves the system that
the intellectual seeks to oppose; the "reality" that such a narrative seeks
to expose merely integrates these fragments intowhat van derVeer calls
"the larger story of progress" (189).
If we accept Spivak's conclusion that the "subaltern cannot speak"
(308), the project of theTRC seems no less doomed to failure than the
attempts by theMagistrate to understand the experience of the oppressed,
for the truth that theTRC believes will lead to reconciliation cannot be
articulated.LindaAlcoff observes that "the practice of speaking for others
isoften born of a desire ... to privilege oneself as the one who more cor
rectly understands the truth about another's situation or as one who can
champion a just cause" (29), and this certainly seems to be theMagistrate's
motivation. Moreover, through the conflation of the search for truthwith
the effecting ofjustice, the state creates a narrativeof oppression thatmay
have the veneer of justice but ultimately serves its own power.
Just as part of theTRC's project is to redefine the position of the
South African government so that it can critique its earlier self,part of the
Magistrate's search for social justice is to find some position fromwhich
he can oppose the Empire.This is evident as he coerces a barbarian girl
to livewith him, forcing her off the streetwhere she begs and supports
herself through prostitution. Hobbled and partially blinded by Joll in his
own search for truth, she becomes, for theMagistrate, the embodiment
of the oppression he longs to understand.Contemplating his relationship
10

with the barbarian girl, theMagistrate claims his motives are honorable:
"Iwanted to do what was right, Iwanted tomake reparation: Iwill not
deny thisdecent impulse,howevermixed with more questionablemotives:
theremust alwaysbe a place for penance and reparation" (79).
Although theMagistrate's "questionablemotives" may be interpreted
as including his muted and largely impotent sexual fascinationwith the
girl, they also include his desire to save himself from the shame of his
involvement in theworkings of Empire.When thrown in prison, at first
he feels elated because he believes that his "alliancewith the guardians
of the Empire is over" (76) (recallingHenry David Thoreau's view that
"[u]nder a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for
a justman is also a prison" [859]), yet he quickly understands that his op
position to the Empire is not based on principle but rather on thewish
that it could be based on principle: "In my opposition there is nothing
heroic-let me not for an instant forget that" (77).He wants to be the
"One JustMan" of Empire, but he sees that his treatment of the barbar
ians,while different in intention, is not so different in effect from the
treatment they receive at the hands ofJoll. Early on, as he first faces the
physicalmark of Empire, themark on the body leftby torture,he entreats
a boy takenprisoner by Colonel Joll to confess:"Listen:you must tell the
officer the truth.That is all he wants to hear from you-the truth.Once
he is sureyou are telling the truth he will not hurt you. But you must tell
him everything you know" (7).Although he intends to help the boy, and
although he tries to speak to him from a position other than the Empire's,
he almost immediately recognizes that he is as involved in the torture of
this boy, in the process of exacting truth, asJoll is.He "cannot pretend to
be any better than amother comforting a child between his father's spells
of wrath," and he recognizes that "an interrogator can wear two masks,
speakwith two voices, one harsh, one seductive" (7).Later,he reahzes that
he is "the lie thatEmpire tells itselfwhen times are easy; [Joll] the truth
thatEmpire tellswhen harshwinds blow."He and Joll are "[t]wo sides of
imperial rule, no more, no less" (133).The Magistrate, the old man who
serves aspeacetime governor for this town, recognizes that in spite of his
best intentions and his desire to be a just leader,his voice is the seductive
side of the voice of torture, and his speech serves the Empire whose acts
of violence he detests.
In the face of his own complicity, he begins to confuse justice with
penance; he confuses his desire to save the victim of Empire with his de
11

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sire to savehimself.When he is confronted by the spectacle of the abused

barbarian girl, he longs to purify himself, to wash away the feelings of
uncleanliness and guilt that come with the recognition of his own com
plicity.He wonders if Colonel Joll "has a private ritual of purification"
that allows him to exist in "clean" society after committing unclean acts,
and he imagines Joll "wash[ing] his hands very carefully"or "chang[ing]
all his clothes" (12) to remove the stain of guilt left by torture.When the
Magistrate seeswhat has become of the barracks hall that has served as
a jail forJoll's prisoners, he shouts, "Iwant everything cleaned up! Soap
and water! Iwant everything as itwas before!" (23), revealinghis desire to
erase the physical evidence of torture and his own involvement in it.But
themost suggestive ritualof washing in the novel is theMagistrate's com
pulsive washing of the barbarian girl's disfigured feet, an act he describes
as"rapture,of a kind" (29). Ifwe associate this actwith thewashing of feet
inJohn 13,10 it suggests that theMagistrate tries to act as the girl's savior,
that he tries to purify her after she has been defiled, first at the hands of
Joll and then by living as a prostitute. Ironically,this act of salvation comes
only as he makes her, in effect, hiswhore. However, ifwe associate itwith
the sinning woman's compulsion to wash Jesus's feet and anoint them
with oil in Luke 7,11 the ritual suggests that it is theMagistrate who has
become a prostitute, buying a life of leisure from the Empire by selling
himself through silent comphcity with a system of torture and oppression,
and that he believes at some level that the girl will be his salvation.His
compulsion to wash her hobbled feet, to explore themarks on her body
with his hands and thereby understand something about her experience
with the Empire, parallels his desire to read thewooden slips and under
stand the experience of theirwriter.
What is at stake in his desire to read thesemarks is his own salvation.
Without a knowledge of the experience of the tortured girl, he cannot
confess, and his guilt cannot be expunged. Kissing her forehead, he asks,
"What did they do to you?" (31), longing for her to narrate her experi
ence of torture for him, andwhen she does not answer him, he runs his
fingers over her body, feeling "a phantom criss-cross of ridges under the
skin."He, like the torturerJoll, probes her body for truth, demanding an
answer that she seems reluctant or unable to provide.12For much of the
novel, she does not respond to his questions, and when she finally does
try to answer, he is still unsatisfied. She tells of being partially blinded,
12

giving what seems to be a factual account of the experience, but that is

not enough for him:
I takeher face between my hands and stare into the dead
centres of her eyes, fromwhich twin reflections of myself stare
solemnly back. "And this?" I say,touching theworm-like sear in
the corner.
"That is nothing.That iswhere the iron touched me. It
made a little burn. It isnot sore."She pushes my hands away.
"What do you feel towards themen who did this?"
She lies thinking a long time.Then she says,"I am tired of
talking." (40-41)
As theMagistrate tries to see the experience of the barbarian girl, he sees

only his own reflection; he seeks to understand her not for her sake but
so thathe can forget her and savehimself.He thinks that in order to leave
his complicity with torture and oppression behind, he must understand
her experience.
Coetzee's novel troubles the conflation of truthwith justice.While
theMagistrate wants his concern for the barbarians to serve as reparation,
his actions do not repair the barbarian girl's eyes or feet. Instead, they
serve as his penance: even if he is not forgiven by the barbarian girl, he
can at least forgive himself for his own complicity in her torture and, by
extension, the torture andmurder of countless others.
In the same way that he tries to interpret the girl's body and the
marks on thewooden slips,he searchesformeaning in the three specks on
thewall of the room inwhich he has been imprisoned, trying to translate
them into the voice of the oppressed: "Why are they in a row? Who put
them there?Do they stand for anything?" (83).He "realize[s]how tiny [he
has] allowed them to make [his]world, how [he] daily become[s] more
like a beast or a simple machine, a child's spinning-wheel, for example"
(83).Searching formeaning in something he cannot understand leadshim
to realize how confined he isby the Empire-by its language, its subject
positions, itsmeanings-but this realization does not allow him to escape
those confines. Even if he recognizes thathe is confined by the ideologi
cal position of ImperialMagistrate, he cannot escape it and occupy the
position of the other.
13

TroyUrquhart
Not justice but justification

I cannot save the prisoners, therefore letme savemyself
In addition to offering a space inwhich thosewho were oppressed can

speak about their oppression, theTRC offers redemption to thosewho
confess their involvement in that oppression.However, for those like the
Magistrate who are comphcit in the actions of theEmpire but not directly
involved in committing atrocities, confession requires a knowledge of the
wrongs that have been committed. The Magistrate's confession depends
on his ability to discoverwhat has happened, yet he cannot remember the
barbarian girl as shewas before being marked by Empire. Remembering
her might offer him the opportunity to confess, but she has become a
blank space in his mind, her image cast out because thememory of her
body unmarked by torturewould force him to confront the reality of
her torture and the shame of his involvement in it."3He "believe[s] that
[he] saw her on the day she was brought in by the soldiers roped neck
to neck with the other barbarian prisoners," yet he has "no memory of
that passage" (33).He believes that "thememory [of the girl] is lodged"
within "the honeycomb of [his]brain,"but she remains "a space, a blank
ness" even though he "can remember every [other] detail" of the scene
inwhich the barbarianprisoners enter the town (46). If his repression of
hismemories of the girl representshis defense against the overwhelming
guilt of his own complicity in her torture, his compulsion to trace the
outline of her body representshis attempt tomaster this guilt, to under
stand themark of Empire and somehow make sense of his involvement
in her torture. If he could remember her, he could, perhaps,make some
sense of this experience. Remembering the barbarian girl would then
become a kind of forgetting, for it is by remembering that he would be
able to redeem himself.
Itwill take time to understand the long-term effects of theTRC's
investigations and report, but the report, released inMarch 2003, is am
biguous in its attempt to define and establish justice.Tutu recognizes the
problematic implicationsof retributivejustice-the South African govern
ment could no longer exist, the oppressorswould trade places with the
oppressed-so theTRC calls for restorativejustice as away to heal South
Africa and allow it to transcend the "conflicts and divisions of the past."
14

This model of justice is, on the surface, attractive to everyone involved.

For the oppressed, it offers the fantasy of an Edenesque return to abso
lute equality and freedom. For the oppressor, it offers easy forgiveness for
the atrocities and a continuing place in the legal and economic affairsof
South Africa. A report from the South African PressAssociation issued
after the completion of theTRC's final two volumes describes Tutu as
insisting that the "Truth andReconciliation Commission did not seek to
punish people" and that"theTRC did not set out to embarrassanyone";
rather, itworked "to find evidence for people to accept responsibility
and accountability" ("TRC Not Out to Punish"). But restorativejustice
whitewashes murder.
If we recognize theMagistrate as being politically invested in the
Empire he critiques,we should also recognize thatTutu is invested in the
future of the South African state.And just as theMagistrate's search for
justice ismotivated by a desire for penance rather than reparation, the
TRC's search for justice is at least partiallymotivated by similar goals:
to gain forgiveness for the South African state, to quickly move beyond
its painful past, and to restore its political legitimacy.And if these are its
goals, it has done remarkablywell: according to Cape Town's Institute for
Democracy in South Africa, 25 percent of black South Africans now have
a positive image of South Africa under apartheid ("Harper's Index").
Closely scrutinizing theTRC's goals becomes especially important as
theTRC isbeing touted as amodel of justice for other states to follow.
Kiraitu Murungi, Kenya'sMinister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs,
has instituted a truth commission, hoping thatKenya can "undergo the
healing power of truth" (qtd. in "Kenya");Iraq'sIbrahimJaafarihas called
for a truth conmission in Iraqmodeled on South Africa'sTRC ("Iraqi");
and theReverend John Dinnen, Dean of Down, expresses a similarhope
for Ireland.He has said:
I appeal to both church and political leaders to give serious
consideration to setting up a forum for healing through remem
bering, based on the lessons of the South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. (McCreary)
The question raised by the dean's appeal is this:justwhat are the "les
sons" of theTRC? So far, it seems thatCoetzee's Magistrate has proved
a prophetic model, as theTRC, under cover of healing the victim, has
maintained the power of the state.Truth commissionsmay be able to rec
15

TroyUrquhart
oncile opposing parties, but they can be less interested in healing victims
than in preserving the stability of the state that committed or condoned
the actions they now condemn. The remembering undertaken through
restorative justice becomes away to demonstrate the state'smoral legiti
macy. It confuses penance with reparation,and it gives the victims a voice
primarily to legitimize the power of government. Restorative justice is
finally not about the victim but about restoration of the state.
Notes
1. South Africa's Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995
establishes the TRC and charges itwith the following task:
to promote national and reconciliation in a spirit of understand

unity
ing which transcends the conflicts and divisions of the past by?
as a as of the causes, nature

(a) establishing complete picture possible
and extent of the gross violations of human which were com
rights
mitted during the period from 1March 1960 to the cut-off date,
the antecedents, circumstances, factors and context of such
including
violations, as well as the of the victims and the motives and
perspectives
of the persons responsible for the commission of the viola
perspectives
tions, by conducting investigations and holding hearings;
(b) facilitating the granting of amnesty to persons who make full dis
closure of all the relevant facts to acts associated with a
relating political
objective and comply with the requirements of thisAct;
(c) establishing and making known the fate or whereabouts of victims

and by restoring the human and civil dignity of such victims by grant
them an to relate their own accounts of the violations
ing opportunity
of which are the victims, and mea
they by recommending reparation
sures in respect of them;
a as an account as pos
(d) compiling report providing comprehensive
sible of the activities and findings of the Commission contemplated
in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c), and which contains recommendations of
measures to prevent the future violations of human rights. (2.3.1)
2. Some writers have the of truth to serve as For
challenged ability justice.
instance, Suzanne observes that even "the believers say that truth
Daley though
is at least half of justice," truth commissions do not provide justice but rather
serve in its stead when retributive justice would be politically too difficult for
16

a In a similar vein, Mary Braid describes the conflation of truth and

society.
justice in South Africa as "schizophrenia" and remarks that "[t]ruth, not justice,
is the best new South Africa can offer."
The restorative justice that the TRC seeks through the exposure of truth
should be contrasted to both retributive justice and reparative justice. Retribu
tive justice, grounded in ideas descended from Hammurabi's code, would de
mand a to or in excess of the crime. In and
punishment comparable Disdpline
Punish, Foucault observes that this type of punishment evolved into a political
ritual inwhich the crime was often theatrically reproduced on the body of
the perpetrator in "a not of measure, but of imbalance and excess"
spectacle
(49) in order to redress both the wrong done to the victim and the affront
to the person of the who embodies the law. Reparative on
sovereign, justice,
the other hand, is concerned not with the proverbial for an
extracting "eye
from the perpetrator but with demanding another form of
eye" compensation
from the perpetrator for the victim that does not
repays?but reproduce?the
crime. As noted above, the TRC does include the establishment of reparations
as one of its objectives, but its pursuit of reparative justice is clearly secondary
to its pursuit of restorative justice, inwhich the narration of the truth about
the crime reconciles victim and perpetrator, both parties
supposedly restoring
to their former, status.
precrime
3. A 1996 Finandal Times article quotes Tutu's statement that "if justice alone
were allowed to take its course, the country would be reduced to ashes" ("For
giving").
4. Moses that one that reverses a power

argues any government?even dy
namic a coup d'?tat?relies on the distinction between and
through Empire
barbarian for its definition of self. He that Coetzee's novel seeks an
suggests
option outside of this civilized/barbaric dichotomy: not an uplifting of the

downtrodden or an of power but rather a of the struc
overturning redefining
ture of power itself a return to an Edenesque way of life.
through
5. Even then, of course, we are not the voice of the barbarian victim,
hearing
but aWestern
interpretation ofthat voice. As Iwill argue, this is not necessarily
a or accurate
meaningful representation.
6. In Complidties, Mark Sanders points out: "The duty to speak out is linked
with awill or desire not to be an accomplice" (4).
7. The TRC, like theMagistrate and also?rather disturbingly?like Joli, wants

more than to get at the truth. Of the for amnesty that were
nothing appeals
refused by the TRC, it is striking that the basis for those refusals was almost al
ways for not telling the truth, as is the case in the appeal of Bongane Shadrack
17

Troy Urquhart
Khumalo, who murdered a man in 1992 For further see

(Wilson). examples
the refused appeals of Andrias Matanzima Nosenga (Miller) and Napo Gabriel
Sefuthi and Neo Ularius Ramasuku (Potgieter). Nosenga was convicted of
nine counts of murder, six counts of murder, and
attempted illegal possession
of arms and ammunition. between his two for am
Discrepancies applications
caused the commission to refuse his in part because it "is
nesty applications,
not satisfied ... that the Applicant has made a full and truthful disclosure of all
material facts related to the incident" (Miller). Sefuthi and Ramasuku mur
dered a man and claimed to be as a member of a task force of the Pan
acting
Africanist but the commission denied their for amnesty be
Congress, appeal
cause "we are not satisfied that the version of the Applicants can be
reasonably
true" there are numerous instances where the refusal to tell
(Potgieter).While
the truth resulted in the commission's denial of an there are
amnesty appeal,
countless instances of murderers who were amnesty because the com
granted
mission was satisfied that they told the truth.
8. Much of Coetzee's fiction challenges the possibility of one person's

un
or articulation of another's the narrator of In

derstanding experience. Magda,
the Heart is unable to reach any sort of understanding with her
of the Country,
father, with his new lover, or even with her own lover. In The Master of Peters
to know some truth about the deceased son
burg, Coetzee's Dostoevsky longs
he knows vague memories, second-hand and a collection
only through reports,
of his writing. In Life and Times ofMichael K, Coetzee juxtaposes the narrative
of the oppressed Michael K with the narrative of a doctor who, in spite of his
good intentions, is a supporter of the system that oppresses Michael K.The
doctor wants to understand Michael K, whom he calls Mi

why erroneously
chaels, refuses to eat. The doctor cannot understand Michael K any more than
can understand Pavel, or can understand her father.
Dostoevsky Magda
9. Sanders notes that in speaking for the victims of Empire, "there is always,
a contamination of the other with an other"
necessarily, (17).
10. In John 13.4?5, Jesus "rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded
himself with a towel. Then he water into a basin, and to wash
poured began
the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded"
(
Oxford Annotated Bible).
11. In Luke 7.37-38,
a woman the was a sinner, that he was

of city, who when she learned
at table in the Pharisee's house, an alabaster flask of
sitting brought
ointment, and behind him at his feet, she began to
standing weeping,
18

Truth,Reconciliation,and theRestorationof theState:
WaitingfortheBarbarians
wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head,
and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.
(OxfordAnnotated Bible)
After "the ritual of the washing" inWaiting for theBarbarians, theMagistrate
"rub[s] her body with almond oil" (30).
12. Foucault 's of government-sponsored torture in and Pun
analysis Disdpline
ish asserts that in systems of punishment "it is always the body that is at issue,"
that punishment is "situated in a certain 'political economy' of the body," and
that the "power relations" of a society "have an immediate hold upon [the
body]; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to
perform ceremonies, to emit signs" (25).The Magistrate longs to read these

signs, to find and understand the marks left on the body of the girl, to under
stand of the truth about her as a victim of Empire. Not
something experience
only would this understanding allow him to speak for the barbarian girl, but it
would also allow him to know something about the power of the government
he serves and about the crimes for which he needs to be redeemed.
13. Freud remarks on his formulation of the theory of repression: "Everything

that had been forgotten had in some way or other been distressing; it had been
either alarming or painful or shameful by the standards of the subjects' person
ality" (17).
I am indebted toRobin Blyn and Katherine Romack for their careful readings
and which this essay. Many thanks also to Mary
provocative questions, inspired
Lowe-Evans and the department of English at the University of West Florida
for their support of my work, and to the editors of Twentieth-Century Literature
for their editorial suggestions.
Works cited
Alcoff, Linda. "The Problem of Speaking for Others." Cultural Critique 20
(Winter 1991-92): 5-32.
Attwell, David. J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and thePolitics ofWriting. Berkeley: U
of California P, 1993.
Braid, Africa Buries Its Past." 23 Oct. 1996, essay sec:
Mary."South Independent
16.
Coetzee, In theHeart of theCountry. 1977. New York: Penguin, 1982.

J.M.
-. and Times ofMichael K. 1983. New York: Penguin, 1985.
Life
-. The Master of Petersburg. 1994. New York: Penguin, 1995.
-. Waiting
for theBarbarians. 1980. New York: Penguin, 1999.
19

Troy Urquhart
Daley, Suzanne. "Bitter Medicine: Settling for Truth in the Quest for Justice."
New York Times 27 Oct. 1996, late final ed., sec. 4: 1.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of theEarth. New York: Grove, 1963.

"Forgiving but Not Forgetting." Financial Times 22 Aug. 1996, London ed.,
leader sec: 17.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of thePrison. Trans. Alan Sher
idan. New York: Vintage, 1995.
-. The An Introduction.Vol. 1. Trans. Robert
History of Sexuality: Hurley.
New York: Vintage, 1990.
Freud, Sigmund. "An Autobiographical Study." The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay.
New York: Norton, 1989. 3-41.
Gallagher, Susan VanZanten. "Torture and the Novel: J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for
theBarbarians." Contemporary Literature 29.2 (Summer 1988): 277-85.
Index." Harpers Magazine Feb. 2003:11.
"Harper's
"Iraqi PMVows to Beef Up Security, Calls for Truth Commission." Agence

France Presse 31 May 2005. LexisNexis Academic. <http://www.
lexis-nexis .com/universe >.
"Kenya: It's the Only Way to Forge Ahead, SaysMutunga." The East African
Standard 24 Mar. 2003. All Africa Global Media. LexisNexis Academic.
<http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe>.
LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

UP, 2001.
McCreary, Alf. "Dean's Call for Truth and Healing Forum." Belfast Telegraph 18
Mar. 2003. LexisNexis Academic, <http://web.lexis-nexis.com/uni
verse>.
Miller, et al. Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Selwyn, Amnesty
Committee Decision. Andrias Matanzima Nosenga, Applicant
(AM2778/96). 20 Feb. 2001. Cape Town, <http://www.doj.za/trc/
decisions/2001 /ac21068 .htm>.
Moses, Michael Valdez. "The Mark of Empire: Writing, History, and Torture
in Coetzee's Waiting for theBarbarians." Kenyon Review 15.1 (Winter
1993): 115-27.
Olsen, Lance. "The Presence of Absence: Coetzee's the Barbarians."
Waiting for
Ariel 16.2 (Apr. 1985): 47-56.
Oxford Annotated Bible. Ed. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger. New York:
Oxford UP, 1962.
Denzil, et al. Truth and Reconciliation Commission Com
Potgieter, Amnesty
mittee Decision. Napo Gabriel Sefuthi, First Applicant (AM5925/97);
Neo Ularius Ramasuku, Second 1Mar. 2001. Town.
Applicant. Cape
<http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/decisions/2001/ac21079.htm>.
20

Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act. 19 July 1995.The Par

liament of the Republic of South Africa, <http://www.doj.gov.za/
trc/legal/act9534.htm>
Tom. Witness to Public 7 Apr. 2002, Mel
Ryan, "Bearing Justice." Sunday Age
bourne ed., sec: 6.
agenda
Sanders, Mark. Complicities :The Intellectual andApartheid. Durham: Duke UP,
2002.
the Subaltern Marxism and the Inter
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty."Can Speak?"
pretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Urbana:
U of IUinois P, 1988. 271-313.

Thoreau, David. "Resistance to Civil Government." 1849,1866. The
Henry
Norton Anthology ofAmerican Literature. Shorter 5th ed. Ed. Nina Baym
et al. New York: Norton, 1999. 852-67.
"TRC Not Out to Punish FW:Tutu." South African Press Association. Global
News Wire. 21 Mar. 2003. LexisNexis Academic. <http://web.lexis
nexis.com/universe>.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report. Vol. 6. Cape

Town: Juta, 2003. <http://www.info.gov.za/otherdocs/2003/trc/>.
Tutu, Desmond Mpilo. No FutureWithout Forgiveness. New York: Image, 1999.
van derVeer, Peter. "The Victim's Tale: Memory and Forgetting in the Story of
Violence." Violence, and Self-Determination. Ed. Hent deVries
Identity,
and SamuelWeber. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.186-200.
Wilson, Andrew, et al.Truth and Reconciliation Commission Amnesty
Committee Decision. Bongane Shadrack Khumalo, Applicant
(AM514/97). 23 Jan. 2001. Cape Town, <http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/
decisions/2001/ac21009.htm>.
21


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Truth, Reconciliation, and the Restoration of the State: Coetzee's "Waiting for the

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InWriting History,Writing Trauma,Dominick LaCapra observes that the

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

Although it predated the establishment of theTRC by 15 years,J.M.

Something called restorative justice

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

African government, andwhat theTRC is healing is not the individuals

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ther-interpreter" revealsone of the troubling assumptions of theTRC's

[M]ore often than not thememory of violent events isnot

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Penance and reparation

The contrast inWaitingfor theBarbariansbetween theMagistrate's search

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attempts to speak for the other is his pretended translation of wooden

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experience to a third,combining a description of the death of a prisoner

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

does not recognize that his interpretation is self-interested.Certainly the

Representation in the first sense, vertreten,denotes political proxy, speak

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This foreclosing of the necessity of the difficult taskof coun

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

sire to savehimself.When he is confronted by the spectacle of the abused

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

giving what seems to be a factual account of the experience, but that is

As theMagistrate tries to see the experience of the barbarian girl, he sees

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

Not justice but justification

In addition to offering a space inwhich thosewho were oppressed can

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

This model of justice is, on the surface, attractive to everyone involved.

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

to promote national and reconciliation in a spirit of understand

as a as of the causes, nature

objective and comply with the requirements of thisAct;

(c) establishing and making known the fate or whereabouts of victims

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

a In a similar vein, Mary Braid describes the conflation of truth and

4. Moses that one that reverses a power

option outside of this civilized/barbaric dichotomy: not an uplifting of the

7. The TRC, like theMagistrate and also?rather disturbingly?like Joli, wants

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

Khumalo, who murdered a man in 1992 For further see

8. Much of Coetzee's fiction challenges the possibility of one person's

or articulation of another's the narrator of In

doctor wants to understand Michael K, whom he calls Mi

11. In Luke 7.37-38,

a woman the was a sinner, that he was

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM

perform ceremonies, to emit signs" (25).The Magistrate longs to read these

13. Freud remarks on his formulation of the theory of repression: "Everything

for their editorial suggestions.

Coetzee, In theHeart of theCountry. 1977. New York: Penguin, 1982.

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Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of theEarth. New York: Grove, 1963.

"Iraqi PMVows to Beef Up Security, Calls for Truth Commission." Agence

LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

Miller, et al. Truth and Reconciliation Commission

This content downloaded from 128.252.67.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 22:49:05 PM