Worlds, world-making, and Southern horizons

The question of the location and horizon of J. M. Coetzee's fictions is a matter of intense debate. Some insist that he is a writer of South Africa and that his work ought to be read in relation to the history and culture of that country. For others, he is an exemplary figure of 'world literature'. His works are widely translated and celebrated, and so properly belong to a global field of literary endeavour. If these accounts at first appear to pull in different directions, they might nevertheless share a common horizon. It may well be that the South African location and locatedness of Coetzee's early and middle fictions were precisely what allowed them to resonate with readers across the world. After all, the struggle against apartheid was considered by many to be of world-historical significance. Like Nelson Mandela's march to freedom, Coetzee's fictional explorations of the South African situation come to stand for the general struggle of literature in the face of oppression. That he writes in the 'hypercentral' language of English, and in a syntax and diction that seem to facilitate ready translation, only smooths the way for his colonial parables to be read and appreciated across the literary world. His decision to relocate to Australia in 2002 appeared to confirm a universalizing trajectory. Australia, that immense landmass popularly regarded as being mostly empty of humans, is an appropriately blank canvas on which to elaborate works increasingly concerned with general philosophical and ethical problems. In any case, both localists and universalists implicitly agree that the question of the horizon of Coetzee's fiction is one that hinges on reception. Even the most possessive of South African specialists concede that other interpretative approaches are valid; and even the most universalizing of world literature critics can see that his works have meanings and significances that speak to local conditions. In this chapter I will be approaching the question of location and horizon from a different angle. I will focus not on the competing claims of Coetzee's various interpreters but on the locations ' and latent horizons of Coetzee's literary practice. Particularly, I want to think about the worlds that he makes in his fictions and the ('real') world that gives rise to this making. To adapt terms used by Eric Hayot, I am interested in exploring the relation between his work's world-making and world-relating dimensions. What worlds do his fictions create? And to what world(s) are they oriented? Addressing these questions takes us away from a local/universal dichotomy and prompts us to think about the relations between literary localities that his writing brings into play.