Raising Introspective Awareness in Resisting Colonizing Ideologies: Coetzee?s Waiting for the Barbarians
Deconstructing colonization and the colonizing discourse is a long and continuing process. Many
intellectuals participated, and still participate, in this noble mission. However, ?Waiting for the
Barbarians? is a literary work that resists the colonial ideology through raising the colonizer?s,
and consequently the reader?s, awareness of the pervasive ideology of dehumanization; it is this
ideology that makes possible the severe torture of the prisoners without the torturers? feeling
or awareness of their criminal deeds. This ideology of dehumanization and the struggle against
its domination is manifested by the character of the protagonist who, as a representative of the
colonizer, experiences a gradual process of confusion, introspection, and remorse that enables the
reader to experience closely, rather than merely witness from a distance, an exemplary process of
self-questioning. This theme of self-questioning is one of the main themes of Coetzee?s Waiting
for the Barbarians. The novel creates in us an ability to question the different ideologies that
enslaved us unconsciously, especially at our modern time when It seems that we became so
obsessed with materialism and our existential needs that risking one?s physical safety or financial
security to stand up for one?s principles will never be an issue for most people, especially those
living in what was known as colonizing countries or, in modern terminology, the developed
or first world. Thus, the aim of this paper is to investigate how the novel creates in its reader a
revival of a moral and ultimately political sensibility that is usually inhibited by the ideology of
dehumanization.