Imagining Other and Moral Obligations in Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg

Abstract

This paper investigates the moral obligations in imagining others in literature. It focuses on J.M. Coetzee’s masterpiece The Master of Petersburg. It argues that in this novel, Coetzee uses truth, betrayal, confession, and responsibility to the foreign other to introduce an elusive text that not only challenges but also evades any attempt to fit it into a simple or traditional frame of analysis. Such elusiveness emphasizes the complexity of imaging the foreign other as well as provoking unsettling thoughts about the role of literature as an influential instrument for our moral actions. The responsibility towards the other can be discussed in numerous levels but in this essay, I will discuss the text as semi-biographical. In other words, the discussion will focus on how Coetzee introduces the historical Dostoevsky and how Coetzee responds to such ethical burdens in his task of introducing the fictional and the historical Dostoevsky.