Therefore, this thesis interrogates Lurie’s objectification of women and animals to demonstrate that Romantic tendencies can function as a veiling mechanism, allowing Lurie to perceive their bodies as mere supports to his fantasy. That is, his fantasy calls attention to a construction of ‘the human’ that is implicitly hostile to Others. Further, I argue that Lurie’s fantasy relies upon cultural dualisms that privilege reason over nature, man over woman, white over black, and hu(man) over animal, resulting in a construction of ‘the human’ that is masculine, white, and of the mind. As such, my project seeks to demonstrate that the novel presents a challenge to Romantic tendencies that oversimplify materially complex realities. Specifically, I am interested in the extent to which these Romantic vestiges constitute a fantasy for Lurie, allowing him to participate in these systems of oppression, while also providing him with a means to understand himself as sensible and empathetic. It thus asserts that Disgrace opens a space to explore how certain legacies, or vestiges, of Romanticism are implicated in systems of oppression: colonialism, patriarchy, racism, sexism, and speciesism. Coetzee’s Disgrace, David Lurie, enacts a limited worldview, which is indicative of a colonialist mentality informed by scholarly interests in Romanticism. The thesis argues that the protagonist of J.
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