Disgraceland: History and the Humanities in Frontier Country

Abstract

(to my knowledge) has yet addressed specific issue of why Coetzee chose as primary setting for latter part of novel. The question arises both because Salem is not an invented place but a real one, a village about 25 kms from city of Grahamstown in Eastern Cape province of South Africa; and because Disgrace is a novel whose every element seems freighted with symbolic meaning. The answer to this question - or part of it - is that for historical reasons, Lower Albany region of Eastern Cape presents itself as most logical setting for a story concerned at its core with entitlement to land in post-apartheid South Africa. It was in this part of country that nine Frontier Wars were fought between British and Xhosa people during nineteenth century.2 Although specific origins and courses of conflicts varied, fundamental casus belli was question of land, and history of region known to this day as the Border (or just Border) is a history of strife that is everywhere inscribed in landscape. In Grahamstown, for instance, opposing hills on either side of city seem situated endlessly to rehearse a founding moment in district's history (and, according to Noel Mostert, country's history as a whole [479]). In east, Makanna's Kop, now site of a sprawling shack settlement,

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