J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians isn’t about the barbarians; it’s about the waiting. The concept of waiting with all of the possible variations in the meaning of the word- expecting, anticipating, being ‘ready’ for- is what fascinates me most in this novel.
The residents of a desert outpost are led to believe by officials in the existence of barbarians and the imminent threat of their arrival. ‘Preparations’ are made in anticipation of that arrival – preparations in various forms of injustice- until a state of complete chaos and anarchy is created by the officials of the "Empire".
In this period of waiting, public life transforms from an ordinary state to a state of exceptional circumstances, where panic and confusion reign. Anything is possible in this state- nothing is too precious to give up, as no one is too strong to stand alone against this threat. And so, everyone, in unity, gives all they have to those who can ‘protect’ them against the threat of the unknown enemy. For what is life worth without the feeling of (national) ‘safety’, without the feeling of (national) ‘security’? Nobody really asks, “Who are these barbarians?” “Why would they want to hurt us?”
Nobody notices how that whole time, the barbarians have been right there. They arrived with the Colonel- the head barbarian, to abuse the people and their resources, to take what they could and move to another place, where, fortunately for them, no one knows yet what the enemy really looks like.
Hudit,
ReplyDeleteI love your focus on the “waiting” and the way the waiting actually escalates the panic and confusion among the citizens in the settlement. It reminds me of a horror film where so much of the time the anticipation of the frightening monster or killer generates more fear than the actual appearance of the terrifying entity. It also reminded me (sadly) of post-9/11 America when George Bush (and the media) played on citizens’ fear in order to justify the “War on Terror” and the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Just as Bush and the media generated fear in the minds of Americans with their video footage and photos of the 9/11 attack, Colonel Joll and the Empire soldiers generated fear in the minds of the frontier citizens via their stories of the barbarians’ supposed brutality: “All night, it is said, the barbarians prowl about bent on murder and rapine” (122). In both cases, just as you say, no one asks, “Who are these barbarians and why would they want to hurt us?” because if Bush or Colonel Joll actually rationally thought about what they were doing, they wouldn’t be able to go through with it.
I also like what you say about how the “barbarians have been right there” the whole time. The Magistrate even says that point blank in the text when the Warrant Officer takes over his office. The Magistrate says: “Have I not simply been provoked into a reaction by the sight of one of the new barbarians usurping my desk and pawing my papers” (78). Your comment also makes me think about the Magistrate’s tongue-in-cheek comment to Colonel Joll when he says “And can you tell us whether we have anything to fear? Can we rest securely at night?” (23) Coetzee uses sarcasm to great effect in this novel, I think, to point up the ridiculousness and hypocrisy of Colonel Joll and the Empire soldiers’ actions.
I love your attention to the "waiting." It seems that most readers of the novel focus on the "barbarians" in the title and ignore the "waiting." In some ways it's the waiting that produces the barbarians--not only in the sense that, as you say, the "waiters" turn out to be the barbarians (to have been the barbarians all along), but also in the sense that the waiting becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The need to find an enemy, the need to invent an enemy, the need to construct an enemy in a certain way in order to justify your actions and conceal the lie of your moral superiority--these are all part of the "waiting," it seems to me. And when you are determined to find something, you will find it (even if it's not "there"). In that sense, sadly, we can never escape our own projections. But I do think there's also a material "reality" in which the "barbarians" do finally make their appearance in the text, doing exactly what the stereotypes of them had predicted that they would do. The "waiting" (and the "waiting" here was not passive, but involved all kinds of violences predicated on the presence of the hypothesized "barbarians"—or, as you put it, “preparations in various forms of injustice”) created an impossible situation for the "barbarians," who were left no choice but to react, thereby, in the minds of the Third Bureau and its cronies and minions, showing the waiters that they had been correct all along in their beliefs about the "barbarians." A vicious cycle. I can't help thinking of 9/11.
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