Politics of confession: A political reading of Coetzee’s Disgrace

Abstract

The use of religious models in political arena has been a vital tool in the hands of politicians in order to achieve secular objectives, unattainable otherwise. In current research several Confessional features are discussed, with particular emphasis on political confession where a religious practice (confession) is maneuvered to support political acrobats in South African post-apartheid politics. The research evaluates the authenticity of confessional model introduced in South African Truth and reconciliation commission (TRC); a post-apartheid political practice. Current research gauges the relationship of confession and forgiveness in South African context in the light of Coetzee’s Disgrace. The authenticity of contrition is discussed which is the pivotal element in this whole process. This paper evaluates TRC in reference to justice and the grant of amnesty to the violators of gross human rights, how justice is abrogated in order to bring reconciliation. The way TRC attached reconciliation to forgiveness was wrong in its very roots. 

The fiction of dignity helps to define humanity and the status of humanity helps to define human rights. There is thus a real sense in which an affront to our dignity strikes at our rights. Yet when, outraged at such affront, we stand on our rights and demand redress, we would do well to remember how insubstantial the dignity is on which those rights are based.