Border Corpographies in J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)

The study of corpography (corpographese) in J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians establishes a symptomatology of the body -linked to the experiences of torture and eroticism- that associates the illness with somnolence in the fictional text and the parasitization of the represented historical text. The tortured and undesired bodies of the protagonists undergo a process of objectification that manifests the acceleration of the fall of the Empire and the fragmentation of its discursive body as well as reinforces the secrecy and illegibility of the text inscribed in the body of barbarism. This indecipherable text/body is defined by the paradox of the border labyrinth whose specularity gives rise to the illusion of control at the frontier between empire and barbarism. We will study, first of all, the writing of torture on the bodies, focusing on two organs - the eyes and the feet. Then, we will be interested in the erotic experience between the two protagonists. Finally, we will see how these vacuous bodies establish, at the border, a suspensive temporary bond with the historical and the memorial text.