THE DICHOTOMY OF BARBARIANS AND THE CIVILISED IN THE NOVEL WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56815/IRJAHS.v2025i2.78-86
Keywords:
Empire, Imperial Paranoia, Expansion, Settlers, The Other, State-sanctioned violence, Historical Amnesia, War on terror, nightmares and fantasies of the civilisedAbstract
This paper examines the collapse of the binary opposition between "the civilized" and "the barbarians" in J. M. Coetzee’s 1980 allegorical novel, Waiting for the Barbarians. Set in a nameless frontier settlement of a fictional Empire, the narrative follows a Magistrate whose comfortable existence is shattered by the arrival of State security forces led by the cruel Colonel Joll. Through a close reading of the Magistrate’s shifting allegiance, this study analyzes how the Empire’s paranoia constructs a mythical, external "barbarian" threat to justify its own imperial expansion and institutional violence. Ultimately, the paper argues that Coetzee deconstructs this historical dichotomy, revealing that the true locus of barbarism does not reside in the indigenous nomads at the borders, but within the torture chambers and colonial machinery of the civilized Empire itself.
