Psychological Dissociation in J.M. Coetzee's Dusklands

Little scholarship has been written about South African author J. M. Coetzee’s first novel Dusklands, a collection of two stories published in 1974. Yet the novel’s critique of warfare and its effect on the human psyche is every bit as resonant today in the wake of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as it was when it was first published. For that reason, I have chosen to reexamine Coetzee’s lesser-known novel using modern psychological studies on the topic. Of the few critics who have written about the novel’s exploration of violence, most contend that Dusklands illustrates mankind’s inherent sadistic tendencies. Rosemary Gray, for example, contends in “J. M. Coetzee’s Dusklands: Of War and War’s Alarms,” that the novel “reinforce[s] the ideas that history repeats itself and that ‘civilized’ man is naturally pernicious” (32). While I agree that part of Coetzee’s purpose in writing the novel is to illustrate mankind’s dark side, I believe that Dusklands goes beyond merely showing the “pernicious” side of man and focuses instead on what makes it possible for man to inflict cruelty upon others. In the novel, Coetzee uses the characters of Eugene and Jacobus to show that man must dissociate from reality in order to carry out acts of violence without conscience. By focusing on the psychological defense mechanisms exhibited by characters who commit violent acts, Coetzee is able to critique warfare and its effects on the human psyche. Then, by showing how these psychological defenses negatively affect the characters’ personal lives, Coetzee is able to humanize the characters, thereby complicating their identities and reader response to their monstrous actions.

Desensitization

One way Coetzee critiques the effects of warfare on the human psyche is to show the desensitization the two characters exhibit when speaking of violent acts. Eugene’s desensitization is shown in all facets of his life – his work, his relationship with his wife and his relationship with his son. For example, while writing The Vietnam Project, a report about effective uses of psychological warfare, Eugene looks at photographs of the horrors of the Vietnam War. His reaction to them shows his desensitization. His tone is light and comical when talking about photos of severed heads: “A handcart bearing a coffin or even a man-size plastic bag may have its elemental dignity; but can one say the same of a mother with her son’s head in a sack, carrying it like a small purchase from the supermarket? I giggle” (16).The fact that he finds humor in a mother carrying a severed head of her son and compares it to a “purchase from the supermarket,” shows how he has learned to desensitize himself from the atrocities of war in order to continue working on his project. An even more pronounced example comes when he stabs his son. He speaks of his actions in a disconnected, clinical way: “Holding it like a pencil, I push the knife in. The child kicks and flails. A long, flat ice-sheet of sound takes place” (42). The fact that he refers to his son as “the child” shows his desensitization. In addition, his detailed description of the way he holds the knife “like a pencil” and his focus on the sound of the knife going in, shows his lack of emotional involvement in the act itself. By speaking of his acts in a neutral, disconnected way and focusing instead on such things as sound and the placement of the knife in his hand, he can downplay the significance of his acts and his part in their consequences. The fact that he can stab his son and talk casually about it shows the extent to which desensitization has infiltrated his psyche.

Once Coetzee has set up the way in which Eugene uses desensitization to block emotion, he then shows how it affects the rest of his life as well, preventing him from feeling or engaging in life as a normal person would. For example, Eugene talks about sex with his wife as “do[ing] my duty” (8) and then complains that his wife “is disengaged” (8) in the act. This shows how desensitization prevents him from feeling intimate emotions and how this negatively affects his sex life as a result. In a report of a psychological study titled “The Impact of Individual Trauma Symptoms of Deployed Soldiers on Relationship Satisfaction,” Briana S. Nelson Goff et al discusses marital dysfunction in those exposed to warfare violence saying “high levels of individual trauma symptoms in the soldiers, particularly their sexual problems, dissociation, and sleep disturbances, significantly predicted lower marital/relationship satisfaction for both the soldiers and the female partners” (350). Eugene’s marital and sexual problems exemplify the claims of the study. His dissociation causes a disconnect between him and his wife. Moreover, by showing the way in which Eugene’s marriage is affected by his desensitization, Coetzee gives the readers a more sympathetic lens through which to view his traumatized persona.

In addition, when the police arrest Eugene just after he stabs his son, he speaks of the pain they inflict on him in a desensitized way: “Now I am beginning to be hurt. Now someone is really beginning to hurt me. Amazing” (43). The matter-of-fact way he talks about something as acute as pain shows how his desensitization prevents him from feeling even the most extreme emotions. In “Dissociation Following Traumatic Stress: Etiology and Treatment,” Maggie Schauer and Thomas Elbert talk about how dissociation can numb a traumatized subject: “There is ample anecdotal evidence from soldiers or survivors of disasters that they could still run and take survival actions, although they were severely injured, bleeding, etc …” (114). Eugene’s ability to use desensitization to numb the pain the police are subjecting him to is the perfect example of Schauer and Elbert’s claims. This shows the extent to which desensitization has infiltrated his psyche and by extension his life. He is no longer able to connect actions with emotions. Therefore, his actions, and by extension his life, have little meaning. He is like a robot that operates without thought or feeling. This complicates his persona and forces the reader to think deeply about the effect of violence on his psyche.

Jacobus, too, is desensitized to violence. For example, when speaking of a Bushman he has killed, Jacobus says with emotionally unattached finality: “I killed him with a ball through the throat” (60). The matter-of-fact nature of his words here, shows the psychological numbing that has occurred as a result of his repeated violent acts. This is also evident in the way Jacobus describes a widow of a Bushman he has killed: “She may be alive but she is as good as dead” (61). The blunt way he describes the widow’s dejection after the death of her husband, shows his desensitization and how it prevents him from feeling guilt for his part in her suffering. Like Eugene, “Jacobus” disconnects from the significance of his words as a way to prevent himself from acknowledging the meaning behind their utterances. Coetzee depicts the characters’ desensitization in this way as a means of critiquing the psychological costs of those who commit violent acts.

Once Coetzee has shown Jacobus’ desensitization, he then shows how this psychological defense mechanism affects his personal life. This complicates Jacobus’ identity and by extension the reader’s impression of him as a person. Like Eugene, Jacobus’ desensitization prevents him from feeling emotions. The best example of this comes when he describes his interactions with the Hottentots on the frontier: “Tranquilly I traced in my heart the forking paths of the endless inner adventure … underlings rolling their eyeballs, words of moderation, calm, swift march, the hidden defile, the encampment, the gray-beard chieftain, the curious throng, words of greeting, firm tones, Peace! Tobacco!, demonstration of firearms, murmurs of awe …” (66). The fact that Jacobus relays a series of emotional events like a laundry list, each with an even tone and equal weight, shows his desensitization and the way it has robbed his life of emotional meaning. Every event in his life is the same. Nothing holds any more emotional weight than anything else. This complicates his persona, forcing the reader to reexamine his identity and the reason for his unfeeling thoughts and actions.

Coetzee expands his critique of the psychological consequences of violence in later novels as well, though only Dusklands uses this issue as one of its foundational themes. In a portion of his 1976 novel In the Heart of the Country, for example, he focuses on the cycle of violence that dissociation perpetuates. Magda exhibits desensitization similar to that of Eugene and Jacobus except that in her story her desensitization is a response to her father’s abuse. By learning to dissociate from the cruelty her father inflicts upon her, Magda then uses that dissociation to fantasize about committing violent acts herself. Andrew Moskowitz discusses this cyclic phenomenon of violence in his article “Dissociation and Violence: A Review of the Literature.” Quoting a study by Egeland and Susman-Stillman, Moskowitz explains that “women who dissociated [as a defense to abuse] were less likely to have empathy toward their child, making it more likely that they would be abusive, and concluded that ‘dissociation may serve as the mechanism for explaining the transmission of abuse across generations’” (25). This shows the way that dissociative mechanisms such as desensitization can perpetuate and even encourage further violence. Magda’s story exemplifies this claim. When fantasizing about killing her cruel father and his new bride, for example, Magda speaks about disposing of the bodies in a detached, desensitized way: “Am I strong enough to move them unaided in a wheelbarrow, or must I hack away until I have portable sections?” (15). The composed way that Magda speaks of “hacking away” at her father and stepmother’s dead bodies shows her desensitization and the way it allows her to fantasize about committing violent acts without remorse. This desensitization is identical to Eugene and Jacobus’ desensitization except that in Magda’s story she is responding to violence done against her instead of as a response to violent acts she has seen or violent acts she has committed. In this way, with In the Heart of the Country, Coetzee expands his critique of the effects of violence on the human psyche even further, thereby complicating the debate he began in his first novel Dusklands.

Brad J. Bushman and Craig A. Anderson provide a modern-day exemplification of Coetzee’s claims in their 2009 article “Comfortably Numb: Desensitizing Effects of Violent Media on Helping Others.” In it, the authors discuss how exposure to violence in the media can cause viewers to become desensitized to violence, more likely to be aggressive and less likely to exhibit sympathy for others. These findings mirror many of Coetzee’s critiques of warfare violence in Dusklands, thereby strengthening his claims and adding a modern-day spin to his assertions. The following chart, from page 274 of Bushman and Anderson’s article, provides modern psychological data to back up Coetzee’s contentions.

Self Absorption

Another dissociative technique Coetzee uses to critique warfare violence is self absorption. In Dusklands, each of the characters use egotism as a way to rationalize their violent behaviors. Caroline Lusin discusses the two protagonists’ tendencies toward narcissism in her article “Encountering Darkness: Intertextuality and Polyphony in J. M. Coetzee’s Dusklands (1974) and Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers (2000).” In it, she contends that “[Eugene and Jacobus] have a deeply disturbed relationship to their surroundings and lack any awareness or recognition of the ‘other’. Living beyond any healthy social relations, they are centered exclusively on themselves” (72). I agree and I would add that this self-centeredness then helps them to psychologically justify their violent actions against others. One way this manifests itself in Eugene’s life is in the ways he treats his wife. When having sex, for example, he is more concerned with his own satisfaction than hers: “When for my part I convulse your body with my little battery-driven probe, I am only finding a franker way to touch my own centers of power, than through the unsatisfying genital connection. (She cries when I do it but I know that she loves it. People are all the same)” (10). Here, Eugene’s self absorption allows him to “touch his own centers of power” without feeling remorse for the fact that “she cries when I do it.” In other words, he can use this dissociative technique to justify the pain he inflicts on his wife. This narcissistic way of thinking becomes even more pronounced when he stabs his son. When he hears his wife scream, he is so focused on himself, he assumes it is because of her concern for himself: “She need not worry, I am all right” (42). By shifting the focus from his violent act (the stabbing) to his own sense of well-being, he is able to dissociate from his present actions. This self absorption then prevents him from seeing the true reality of his actions and the pain he is causing others.

Once Coetzee has established how self absorption allows Eugene to dissociate from reality in order to commit violent acts, he then shows how this narcissistic way of thinking impacts the rest of Eugene’s life in a negative way. In doing this, Coetzee complicates the reader’s understanding of Eugene’s persona and the reasons behind Eugene’s violent actions. Coetzee shows that Eugene’s self absorption not only allows him to act without conscience, but it also prevents him from seeing and correcting his own flaws. This, in turn, prevents Eugene from personal growth which could greatly improve his life. An example of this comes when Eugene talks about his wife’s desire for him to change:

She lives in the hope that what her friends call my psychic brutalization will end with the end of the war and the Vietnam Project, that reinsertion into civilization will tame and eventually humanize me. This novelettish reading of my plight amuses me: I might even one day play out the role of ruined and reconstructed boy, did I not suspect the guiding hands of Marilyn’s sly counsellors (10).

Eugene’s “amusement” over his wife’s desire for him to stop his “psychic brutalization” and become more “tame” and “human” shows the extent to which his self absorption prevents him from seeing the reality of his situation – that his cruel ways are hurting his wife and their relationship. Here, Coetzee shows how Eugene uses self absorption to dissociate from reality and how this prevents Eugene from seeing his flaws, changing and greatly improving his marriage. By showing the way in which Eugene’s dissociative defense mechanisms negatively impact his married life, Coetzee humanizes Eugene’s character, thereby complicating his persona and reader response to his dissociation.

Jacobus also uses self absorption to shift his focus from the violent acts he’s committing to his own selfish needs. For example when one of the Hottentots he is torturing begs Jacobus to have mercy, Jacobus responds with “Above all I did not want him to disturb my calm” (103). Jacobus not only does not feel remorse for the pain he is causing his prisoner, but he is also annoyed that the prisoner might disturb his cool, calculated demeanor. In other words, he is more concerned with his own interests than that of the other. This is shown even more plainly when Jacobus returns to annihilate the Hottentot tribe and his men who deserted him. Again, one of Jacobus’ former Hottentot servants, begs Jacobus not to kill him: “’I’m just a poor hotnot, master, only one more chance, my master, my father, I will give master anything, please, please, please!’” (101). This time, Jacobus responds: “Dejection and enervation settled over me and I moved away from him. For months I had nourished myself on this day, which I had populated with retribution and death … but this abject, treacherous rabble was telling me that here and everywhere else on this continent there would be no resistance to my power” (101). Here, Jacobus cares more about the fact that the Hottentots are not going to put up a proper fight than he cares about sparing Adonis’ life. In other words, he is so absorbed in his own self interests that it prevents him from seeing the pain he is inflicting on others.

Once Coetzee has set up the way in which Jacobus uses self absorption to dissociate from reality in order to commit violent acts, Coetzee shows how Jacobus’ life is negatively affected by his self-centered way of thinking. An instance of this comes when, after a long and humiliating illness during which the Hottentots care for him and nurse him back to health, Jacobus views his recovery as a sense of victory: “I am among you but I am not of you. I felt calm and exhilarated. I was leaving. I had not failed. I had not died, therefore I had won” (92). Here, instead of expressing his gratefulness to the Hottentots for their hospitality, which would require him to acknowledge his need for their help and his appreciation of that help, Jacobus separates himself from them by declaring the situation a victory for himself: “I had not failed. I had not died, therefore I had won.” Here, instead of seeing the reality of the situation – that the Hottentots helped him recover – he separates himself from them using self absorption. This shows an extreme form of dissociation and makes his character seem more pitiable than vindictive. He is so afraid to acknowledge his own faults that he alters his reality using dissociation as a way to protect his fragile ego. In “Dusklands and ‘The Impregnable Stronghold of the Intellect,” W.J.B. Wood talks about the need of the “Master” to continually find ways to save face in interactions with people believed to be subordinates: “[It is] a desperate bid to conceal or compensate for a human deficiency, a sense of an inner void. We have a disturbing diagnosis of what Coetzee terms ‘the malady of the master’” (19). This “malady” then prevents Jacobus from changing his ways and his views of the Hottentots and prevents him from using the Hottentots’ hospitality as the impetus to create an amicable relationship between frontier soldier and native tribesman. In fact, sadly, it spurs in Jacobus the opposite reaction. It fuels in him a sadistic desire to annihilate the tribe that tried to show him kindness – because that kindness has the potential to disturb and deflate his ego. With this complex examination of Jacobus and his dissociative self absorption, Coetzee complicates his examination of violence and its effect on the human psyche.

Delusions of Grandeur

A related dissociative technique that Coetzee uses to critique warfare violence is delusions of grandeur. Both Eugene and Jacobus use it to pump up their worth and to justify their actions. Eugene, for example, talks about himself in self-aggrandizing ways saying “I am a thinker, a creative person, one not without value to the world” (1) and “I still think of my best work, the best of my work for ITT for example, as a kind of poetry” (31). Here, his proclamation that his recommendations for warfare violence against the Vietnamese are a “kind of poetry,” shows his delusions of grandeur. By exaggerating his sense of self importance, he makes his work seem important and therefore justifiable. On an even larger scale, when talking about warfare, he talks about annihilating the Vietnamese: “I dismiss Phase IV of the conflict. I look forward to Phase V and the return of total air war” (28). Here, he is advocating the destruction of an entire country of people as though he were a God. By aggrandizing the worth of his work and then discussing his work as though from a God-like status, Eugene justifies his acts and avoids shame for their results.

Jacobus also uses delusions of grandeur to justify his actions. By aggrandizing his self worth, he gives himself psychological permission to exert power and violence over others. He becomes so enamored with his own inflated sense of importance, for example, that he adopts a kind of God-like stance when speaking about killing the Hottentots: “I then pronounced sentence of death” (101). Here, his proclamation shows the control and power he has over the lives of others. This power then gives him a sense of entitlement and importance that overrides any kind of rational guilt which might accompany his acts. An even more pronounced example of this comes when he kills an innocent lamb: “Like God in a whirlwind I fell upon a lamb, an innocent little fellow who had never seen his master and was thinking only of a good night’s sleep, and slit his throat” (100). Here, his ability to take the life of another makes him feel all-powerful, even God-like and invincible, thereby preventing any remorse he might feel for his actions. Here again Coetzee illustrates the warped psychology of those who commit repeated acts of violence.

Additionally, both Eugene and “Jacobus” convince themselves of the righteousness of their violent acts as a way to avoid blame for their exploits. Eugene, for example, claims that he “hate[s] war as deeply as the next man” but that he “gave [himself] to the war on Vietnam only because I wanted to see it end. I wanted an end to strife and rebellion so that I could be happy, so that we could all be happy” (48). By convincing himself that his actions are purposeful and positive in this way, he can avert culpability for his actions. “Jacobus,” too, claims that he is not a violent man at heart: “no more than any other man do I enjoy killing” (106). Instead, he considers his acts a kind of service to the world: “I have taken it upon myself to be the one to pull the trigger, performing this sacrifice for myself and my countrymen, who exist, and committing upon the dark folk the murders we have all wished. All are guilty, without exception” (106). These words are the ultimate show of justification for his violent acts. If Jacobus can convince himself that “all” are guilty and that his acts are what “all” of society has wished for, then his acts are not only justified but desired and even admirable. Coetzee uses the characters’ inflated sense of purpose as a way of critiquing the psychological consequences of violence and warfare.

Once Coetzee establishes the way in which the characters use delusions of grandeur to justify their violent actions, he then shows the negative effect this way of thinking has on their lives. For Eugene, it gives him a false sense of importance and makes him feel as though he is above societal law and human conscience. This is evident in Eugene’s Vietnam Project in which he says: “Questions of conscience lie outside the purview of this study. We must work on the assumption that the military believe in their own explanations when they assign a solely military value to terror operations” (22). This “military value” then is a value above the law, a value that must be carried out without conscience. This way of thinking is what allows Eugene to advocate the annihilation of the Vietnamese without guilt. But it is also what prevents him from feeling guilt or shame for the wrongdoings he commits in his private life. He says of the stabbing of his son, for example: “I am sorry but not guilty; because I know that if Martin understood the strain I was under he would forgive me; and also because I believe guilt to be a sterile disposition of the mind unlikely to further my cure” (44). The fact that he refers to his son as Martin, and absolves himself of guilt for his son’s stabbing, shows how his delusions of grandeur have infiltrated his psyche and convinced him that he is above the law of conscience and therefore not culpable for his actions. This, in turn, prevents him from healing and overcoming his psychological dysfunction. He says of his stay in the asylum, for example: “I have no sense of shame at finding myself in a mental institution, nor do I intend to acquire it. The reason I am not ashamed is of course that I have a better case history than the long-term patients” (46). Here, even in an institution, he still clings to his delusions of grandeur as a defense mechanism, saying that there is no shame in being there and convincing himself that he is the best patient. This shows the extent of his warped reality and the ways it prevents him from seeing the truth about his actions and working to prevent them from happening again. This again complicates and humanizes his character for the reader.

Coetzee complicates and humanizes Jacobus’ character, too, by showing the ways in which his delusions of grandeur affect his life in negative ways. Ironically, for Jacobus, one of the costs of his delusions of grandeur is that even though he sees his acts as important and considers himself to be God-like, he also considers his individual life to be insignificant: “When the day comes you will find that whether I am alive or dead, whether I ever lived or never was born, has never been of real concern to me” (107). In other words, because Jacobus has had to detach meaning from the lives of others in order to kill, he has also had to detach meaning from his own life. Therefore, his life has no real significance. He is simply doing his duty. He is, as he says “a tool in the hands of history” (106). The fact that he does not value his life complicates his persona. It also shows how deeply ingrained his dissociation goes and how acutely it has affected his life and perception of himself and the world. By showing Jacobus’ delusions of grandeur and then showing how his way of thinking has negatively affected his personal life, the reader is forced to contemplate his character from a more complicated angle.

But the use of delusions of grandeur as a psychological defense mechanism is not simply an isolated response to power reserved only for Eugene and Jacobus. Delusions of grandeur have been used as a dissociative defense mechanism for those in positions of power throughout history. In a 1977 TV interview with David Frost, for example, President Richard Nixon says of his involvement in the Watergate scandal that “when the president does it, it is not illegal.” Here, his words show that he believes, like Eugene and Jacobus, that because of his powerful position, he is above the law. While Nixon does not use delusions of grandeur as a defense mechanism in response to violence, he does use it as a response to his position of power, something that Jacobus and Eugene also do in their respective stories. This shows the universality and timelessness of Coetzee’s examination of the psychological effects of violence and power in Dusklands.

Even in pop culture, we see the danger of delusions of grandeur, particularly in military films. In the 1992 movie A Few Good Men, for example, Jack Nicholson plays megalomanic Colonel Jessup, a man who believes that it is OK to issue illegal orders under the guise of protecting the country. In his famous “You can’t handle the truth” speech, the colonel justifies the order he gave for a “code red,” or an illicit punishment which ultimately resulted in the death of one of his men, saying “his death, while tragic, probably saved lives.” Jessup goes on to talk about the importance of his command on Guantanamo Bay saying that “My existence … saves lives … you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall … I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.”
Here, with his words “My existence … saves lives,” we see how Colonel Jessup uses delusions of grandeur to justify his illicit violent actions. The fact that he then gets angry when a lawyer questions him about those actions, shows the extent to which he believes he is above the law. The fact that the Colonel makes his statement in a courtroom, which is designed to determine right and wrong, doubly reinforces this belief. The modern-day Colonel’s words show the universality and timelessness of Coetzee’s claims that delusions of grandeur are a common dissociative defensive technique employed by those who inflict acts of violence on others.

Lack of empathy

Coetzee also uses the characters’ lack of empathy to show the inherent psychological distortions present in those who perform violent acts. Eugene declares freely that “the design of war made me callous to suffering” (48). With these statements, Eugene admits that his work, the “design of war,” causes him to be “callous to suffering.” In other words, his work causes him to distance himself from the pain of others, thereby giving voice to Coetzee’s contention that lack of empathy is a psychological consequence of warfare brutality. This lack of empathy is most obvious in the way he treats his wife and son. For example, he is intolerant and unsympathetic to his wife’s depression and unhappiness in the marriage: “I am weary of this mental patient with hair in rats’-tails sprawling around my home, sighing, clasping her hands, sleeping round the clock … [it] deprives her of all appeal: the silent tears, the red nose, the cheesy flesh …” (11). Here, he cannot understand his wife’s feelings or sympathize with them, making it impossible for him to connect with her. His lack of empathy is even more pronounced in his interactions with his son. When he kidnaps his son Martin and takes him to a hotel, Eugene cannot empathize with his son’s erratic emotional response: “Sometimes he cries, sometimes he throws tantrums. When he is too loud I shut him up in the bathroom. Perhaps I am harsh; but I am in no mood for irrational behavior” (38). Here, Eugene’s inability to empathize with his son’s pain causes him to hurt his son further by subjecting him to isolation and abuse. In addition, it prevents him from understanding how to love: “How loud must I shout, how wide with passion must my eyes glare, how must my hands shake before he will believe that all is for the best, that I love him with a father’s love” (38). Here, with Eugene’s words we see his inability to understand love and affection. The fact that he considers shouting, glaring and shaking hands as expressions of a “father’s love” shows the extent to which his lack of empathy for others prevents him from love and connection in his real life. This, in turn, shows how exposure to warfare violence impacts the life of the subject.

Jacobus is equally unsympathetic to the suffering of his victims. He says of a Hottentot victim whom he is torturing that “His eyes apologized like a dog’s. I was not upset. He was coming along” (103). This statement shows not only Jacobus’ lack of empathy but his sadistic enjoyment of power over another. By blocking his own “upset” feelings, Jacobus can justify his acts and revel instead in the sense of power the acts give him. An additional example comes when Jacobus’ Hottentot prisoners begin screaming: “Someone in the village was screaming loudly enough for the screams, thin, boring, one after another, to reach us across half a mile. I tried to listen to them as one listens to the belling of frogs, as pure pattern; but the pattern here was without interest. I wished the screams would go away” (103). Jacobus’ lack of empathy for the Hottentots’ screams, his comparison of their screams to the “belling of frogs” and his wish that “the screams would go away” all show his lack of empathy for his prisoners, thereby proving Coetzee’s contention that lack of empathy is a psychological consequence of warfare violence.

Once Coetzee has shown Jacobus’ lack of empathy toward others, however, he then shows the tragic impact of that dissociative mentality on Jacobus’ life. One tragic impact of Jacobus’ lack of empathy is that when he becomes ill, very few show him empathy in return. The Hottentots laugh at him: “There were spatters of laughter in the crowd” (85) and even his own men tease him: “’Would master like some tail?’ The inside of the hut exploded into giggles and whoops” (88). His lack of empathy toward his men also prevents them from staying loyal to him when he recovers his health and decides to return home. As a result, when he asks his men to leave, they refuse, opting instead to stay with the Hottentot tribe: “’Master can go … master and master’s tame hotnot. We say goodbye, master, goodbye, good luck’” (92). This leaves Jacobus alone with only his servant Klawer and his illness to carry him home. It also fuels a desire for vengeance in Jacobus which he later uses to annihilate the men who abandoned him and the Hottentots who laughed at him: “Through their deaths I, who after they had expelled me had wandered the desert like a pallid symbol, again asserted my reality” (106). This shows a tragic multi-layered effect of Jacobus’ lack of empathy: He shows no empathy for his men, they show no empathy for him, they abandon him, he is humiliated, he retaliates and they are annihilated. By showing the trickle-down effect of dissociation in this way, Coetzee shows just how deep the psychological effects of warfare can run and how widespread their consequences can extend. This, in turn, complicates Jacobus’ character, thereby making the reader think deeply about his actions.

Coetzee returns to this debate in a scene in his later novel Waiting for the Barbarians. In it, the Empire soldiers that torture the Magistrate also lack empathy: “My torturers were not interested in degrees of pain. They were interested only in demonstrating to me what it meant to live in a body … which very soon forgets [notions of justice] when its head is gripped and a pipe is pushed down its gullet” (115). In other words, the Empire soldiers have no empathy for the Magistrate’s suffering. They are interested only in punishing the Magistrate for his subversive acts. Here, with this work, Coetzee expands his look at the dissociation of one violent perpetrator and extends it to an entire entity of people – the Empire soldiers – to show how dissociation can be used to justify violence on a wide scale. (This critique no doubt stems from the cruelty he saw inflicted upon blacks under the Apartheid regime in his home country of South Africa.) By looking at the more personal example of Dusklands and then examining a wider examination of the same topic in Waiting for the Barbarians, we can see how Coetzee complicates his examination of this topic in subsequent works. We also see how his contention that perpetrators of violence must dissociate from reality to commit acts of violence without conscience can be expanded to include wide-scale acts of violence such as those committed by regimes or military entities.

An April 2010 video posting on the U.S. Message Board titled “U.S. Military Brainwashing That Makes Killing Civilians Possible” modernizes Coetzee’s contentions and shows the universality of his claims. In the video, Josh Steiber, a former member of the U.S. military who applied for and got a release as a conscientious objector, speaks with Paul Jay, senior editor for theRealNews.com about military training which uses psychological brainwashing techniques to encourage dissociation in soldiers preparing for war. Steiber cites a cadence chant he and his military cohorts used to sing as an example: “I went down to the market where all the women shop. I pulled out my machete and then began to chop. I went down to the park where all the children play. I pulled out my machine gun and then began to spray.” The callous wording of this chant shows the way in which military training encourages dissociation and lack of empathy for victims, even women and children.
This video shows a modern-day example of the same kind of dissociative techniques Coetzee critiques in his novel Dusklands, thereby showing the universality of his claims. In fact, Coetzee alludes to this military mindset in the opening pages of Dusklands when he quotes Herman Kahn as saying: “It is unreasonable to expect the U.S. Government to obtain pilots who are so appalled by the damage they may be doing that they cannot carry out their missions or become excessively depressed or guilt-ridden.” This quote reinforces Coetzee’s claims that lack of empathy must be put in place in order for military men to inflict violence without conscience.

The 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate also addresses dissociation and how it can be used to train military soldiers to kill others without feeling or remorse. This is shown in a clip on the Turner Classic Movies website. In the clip, called “The Brainwashing Sequence,” an obviously numb soldier sitting in front of an audience of people, is ordered to kill one of his fellow men onstage. The man calmly walks over to the man he has been ordered to kill and begins to strangle him without any show of emotion.
This again shows the way in which military training prevents soldiers from feeling empathy for their victims or remorse for their actions, thereby exemplifying Coetzee’s claims in Dusklands and showing the universality of the use of dissociation as a psychological defense response to violence.

Dehumanization

A final way that Coetzee contends that humans dissociate themselves from the feelings of others in order to commit acts of cruelty is in the way that perpetrators assert their superiority by dehumanizing the Other, making them inferior and therefore deserving of cruel treatment. Eugene, for example, dehumanizes his Vietnamese victims, as a way of separating himself from them and maintaining superiority and control over them. This then gives him a feeling of power which allows him to victimize them without conscience. Eugene “applaud[s] himself” for “having kept away from the physical Vietnam” (16), and for preferring instead to look at photographs of the country which he describes as showing: “The insolence of the people, the filth and flies and no doubt stench, the eyes of prisoners … watching the camera with naïve curiosity, too unconscious to see it as ruler of their destiny – these things belong to an irredeemable Vietnam in the world which only embarrasses and alienates me” (16). Eugene’s description of the Vietnamese people as “insolent” and gullible and the country as being filled with “filth, flies and stench” and being “irredeemable” shows the ways in which he dissociates himself from the Other by using criticisms of them to make them seem lesser and therefore expendable. By thinking of the Vietnamese in these inferior and unsavory ways, he can go on with his Vietnam Project and continue making recommendations for their ultimate annihilation.

In his 1978 book Orientalism, Edward Said discusses this practice of dehumanizing the Other as a way to maintain superiority and control over them. In particular, he talks about the West’s “principal dogmas of Orientalism” (300), which include: “[an] absolute and systematic difference between the West, which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior” (300). Said contends that the West adopts these principles and ideologies “in order to keep the region and its people conceptually emasculated, reduced to ‘attitudes,’ ‘trends,’ statistics; in short, dehumanized” (291). In other words, Said contends, Westerners view people from the Orient with a critical eye in order to maintain their superiority over them. Coetzee contextualizes this argument with his critique of warfare in Dusklands, contending that perpetrators of violence, who come from privileged positions, use dehumanizing mentalities to justify their cruel treatment of the Other.

Jacobus is a particularly good example of this concept. He refers to the Hottentots and Bushmen as animals so he can justify his treatment of them: “The Bushman is a different creature, a wild animal with an animal’s soul … they are like dogs … heartless as baboons they are, and the only way to treat them is like beasts” (58). By reducing people to animal-like status, Jacobus objectifies them and therefore condemns them to subhuman treatment: “There was no more cause for softness. A bullet is too good for a Bushman. They took one alive once after a herder had been killed and tied him over a fire and roasted him” (60). Here, even the violent act Jacobus talks about (“tied him over a fire and roasted him”) suggests that the Bushman is an animal and therefore deserving of animal-like treatment.

Coetzee expands on this ideology in his chapter “Idleness in South Africa,” from his book White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa in which he shows that the mistreatment and judgment of the Hottentots as animal-like has been used by Western Europeans from as far back as the late 17^th century. He quotes Christopher Fryke as saying: “My curiosity led me to enter one of [their huts] and see what kind of life these people led. As I came within, I saw a parcel of them lying together like so many hogs, and fast asleep; but as soon as they were aware of me, they sprang up and came to me, making a noise like turkeys” (15). Fryke’s use of animal terms like “hogs” and “turkeys” to describe the Hottentots shows his dehumanizing attitudes toward them. Here, via Fryke’s words, Coetzee shows that the Hottentots have been marginalized by Western Europeans for centuries. This shows the timelessness and universality of Coetzee’s claims. It also lends some context and historical background to Jacobus’ dehumanizing of the Hottentots in Dusklands where he repeatedly refers to them in animalistic terms so that he can “[shoot them] down like dogs” (61). This again shows how his dehumanizing mentality affects and informs his actions.

Coetzee complicates his examination of the effects of dehumanization on the human psyche in his novel In the Heart of the Country by viewing it from the perspective of the victim. Magda reduces herself to subhuman status as a result of her father’s dehumanizing treatment. The effects of this are shown when, in daydreaming about having children, she says of their birth: “emerging into the light of day at the head of a litter of ratlike, runty girls, all the spit image of myself” (42). Here, her description of herself and her children as “ratlike” shows how her father’s treatment has given her the impression that she is in fact subhuman and therefore deserving of the cruelty he inflicts. In this way the novel shows how dehumanization demoralizes the victim. This again complicates the debate over the impact of violence on the human psyche and adds a new perspective to Coetzee’s exploration of the topic in Dusklands.

Once Coetzee has established how the dissociative practice of dehumanization allows perpetrators of violence to commit cruel acts without conscience, he complicates the discussion by showing how Eugene and Jacobus’ lives are affected by this mentality. For both, this dehumanizing way of thinking prevents them from connection because it fuels an unhealthy desire for superiority and power over others. For Eugene, for example, he criticizes his wife and pumps up his own ego as a way of establishing his superiority and control over her. He says: “Marilyn is a disturbed and unhappy woman. I let her see nothing because … in my estimation [she is] not equipped to understand correctly the insights into man’s soul that I have evolved since I began to think about Vietnam” (9). In this sentence his contention that she is “not equipped to understand” and that he has “evolved,” shows how his colonialist/superior way of thinking has infiltrated his personal relationships and caused a separation between him and his wife.

Jacobus, too, cannot connect as a result of his colonialist/superior mentality. This is most obvious when he talks about his relationships with Bushmen women:

She has seen you kill the men who represent power to her, she has seen them shot down like dogs. You have become Power itself now and she nothing, a rag you wipe yourself on and throw away. She is completely disposable. She is something for nothing, free. She can kick and scream but she knows she is lost … She is the ultimate love you have borne your own desires alienated in a foreign body and pegged out waiting for your pleasure (61).

Here, we see how love relationships for him have become about power and dominance, all as a result of his dehumanizing and colonizing mentality. This, in turn, shows the impact of the dissociative technique of dehumanization on perpetrators of violence and furthers Coetzee’s critique of warfare and his contention that perpetrators of violence must dissociate from reality in order to commit cruel acts without conscience.

Conclusion

J. M. Coetzee’s critique of the effects of warfare violence on the human psyche in his 1974 novel Dusklands, is every bit as relevant today in the wake of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as it was nearly four decades ago, more so in fact since modern-day psychological studies lend credence to his claims. In the novel, Coetzee uses the characters of Eugene and Jacobus to show that man must dissociate from reality in order to commit acts of violence without conscience. The characters’ desensitization, self absorption, delusions of grandeur, lack of empathy and dehumanization prove Coetzee’s point and exemplify his contentions. Moreover, by showing the similar psychological defense mechanisms of two violent characters from different time periods (one from the 1970s, the other from the 1800s), Coetzee strengthens his argument and shows its universality. Finally, by examining the adverse effects of the psychological defense mechanisms that man must put in place in order to commit acts of violence without conscience, Coetzee humanizes characters who might otherwise be dismissed as two-dimensional monsters. In other words, Coetzee asks readers to empathize with characters who are incapable of empathy themselves. In so doing, Coetzee creates a multifaceted, simultaneous examination of man’s capacity for violence and man’s capacity for empathy, thereby raising reader consciousness to a higher level.

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