Beyond Conventions: The Nomadic Smooth Space in J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K

Abstract

This article traces the processes governing the creation of literary places in J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K. The recognition of elements characteristic of pastoral, anti-pastoral and post-pastoral modes of spatial organisation in renderings of the City of Cape Town and the South African countryside constitutes the point of departure for the analysis. Conventional patterns are questioned and subverted, and ultimately proven unfit for the representation of the moments of social and political distress in late twentieth century South Africa. The novel’s protagonist suggestively navigates the interpretation process into the field of postmodern theories of space. The distinction between ‘smooth’ and ‘striated’ space proposed by French philosophers Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze establishes a revealing set of correspondences and evinces previously uncovered exegetic layers of the narrative.