Listening for the Subaltern's Mutilated Voice/Silence: J. M. Coetzee's Foe

This essay examines the critical/ethical question of "speaking for the subaltern," reading Coetzee's Foe― especially Friday―as an allegory for the subaltern's voice/silence. Although his tongue is mutilated/mutelated against his will, Friday's silence should not be read as his inability to communicate but as his unique way of communication or his voluntary rejection of it. Susan's final disillusionment of the language's/ narrative's magic power to conjure the island and its "substantiality" represents Coetzee's demythification of the immediacy and transparency of language. Refusing to speak the Master's language can be seen as an extreme form of rebellion; Friday's silence can be seen as the last fort not contaminated by colonial force. The last scene of the novel in which the unnamed narrator enters Friday through his mouth in order to listen for his story instead of remaining outside and speaking for him suggests such a possibility to listen for the subaltern not penetrating or interrupting their space. Now, the issue of "speaking for" the subaltern should be replaced by that of "listening for" the subaltern, who might be speaking by using the body instead of tongue, or to whom "silence" can be a form of articulation.