Coetzee and hook = Radical Posmodernism ???

From the very perspective of bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins), Coetzee’s Waiting for Barbarians would definitely fit on the shelves with all the other postmodernist literature. Hooks argues that postmodernism ‘excludes certain information’. It is literature, by the voices of ‘academic elites who speak to and about one another with coded familiarity’. After reading Adams post, it became clear that the setting isn’t precisely mentioned (I haven’t read the entire book. I’ll take his word for it). Through our own fascinations we can predict a given setting, within the context of our class room, and having background information on Coetzee, we can assume (invalidly) that the setting takes place in Africa. Nevertheless, this information is not given to the readers. Under the scopes of postmodernism, the very notion of ambiguity is extremely present. In Waiting for the Barbarians, it is very clear that the audience is aware what a ‘barbarian’ is, but the narrator does not seem to really emphasize in detail what a barbarian is. After reading the posts of Leslie and Julia, who have equally demonstrated the dehumanizing elements as the pertain to women in the text, I also realized that Coetzee does not seem to put much thought into the detail of each, raped, or physically abused female. It is this unclearness that hooks would focus on. She argues that “Postmodernism does not focus on ‘otherness and difference’, or mentions very little with no emphasis” (p.362). Postmodernism hardly ever mentions black experience. It is books like Coetzee, that helped contribute to Black Movement, which has helped focus on the issue of ‘identity’. And Coetzee’s literature helps to create, what Hooks calls ‘hopelessness’, which in tern states that “this hopelessness creates longing for insight and strategies for change that can renew spirits and reconstruct grounds for collective black liberation.”