Mafokwana, Mathibela Wilson2023-06-192023-06-192021https://hdl.handle.net/10539/35571A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts to the Faculty of Humanities, School of Literature, Language and Media, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2019The first five novels of JM Coetzee are often seen as anti-realist and their protagonists accordingly often read in terms of psychological or political allegories, or, alternatively, as self-reflexive fictional constructs. But Coetzee’s representation of character can be regarded fruitfully as oscillating between the “realistic” and metafictional, reflecting the dialectic between self-determined (absolute subject position) and determined (relative subject position), and thus resulting in the characters displaying extreme psychological conditions: paranoia, narcissism, sadomasochism, autism and hyperconsciousness. Through close reading of the texts this study shows how the account of subjectivity as unitary, autonomous, transcendent and self-defining is problematised; that the body, far from having metaphysical meaning, is shown to be both a facticity and a textual sign; that the tension between the vivid, objective and plausible portrayal of characters and the self-confession/exposure of their fictionality leads to extreme psychological conditions.enDissertation