What is the significance of the 'barbarian' in Coetzee's work?
The 'barbarian' in my novels, particularly in *Waiting for the Barbarians*, is less a fixed entity and more a projection, a symbol onto which fear and guilt are cast. It represents the 'other' that the powerful construct to legitimize their own dominance and to avoid confronting their own complicity. The true barbarity, one might argue, often resides not with the so-called outsider, but within the colonizer, the administrator, the one who enforces the order. The question then becomes: who are the true barbarians? The narrative probes this inversion, suggesting that the most profound cruelty stems from self-deception and the refusal to acknowledge the humanity of those deemed lesser.
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