Silenced Voices and Orientalist Structures: A Postcolonial Reading of J.M. Coetzee’s Foe

Abstract

This study attempts to analyze the mechanisms of silencing and narrative control in Coetzee’s novel Foe through Edward Said’s significant theory Orientalism. The study examines how the novel critiques colonial strategies of domination through representation and silencing, employing McKee’s textual analysis with close reading method. Said’s notion of Orientalism provides a lens through which the silencing of the character Friday is examined. It is argued that Friday becomes an embodiment of the colonized subject who is deprived not only of voice but of agency and history, replicating the Orientalist mechanism of dehumanization. Moreover, it is also emphasized that the silencing extends beyond Friday to encompass Susan Barton, whose narrative is restructured and altered by the male author Foe. This re-authoring echoes the imperial inclination to correct and rewrite indigenous and feminine voices, thereby underlining the epistemic violence that Said identifies as central to colonial discourse. Through its metafictional framework, the novel Foe confuses the construction of truth and authorship and authority while endorsing Said’s concept about Western society’s tendency to imagine one historical truth. Findings reveal that Foe does not merely depict silencing as a thematic concern, but it shows that colonial narratives suppress subaltern identities like Susan’s story is challenged by the male author Daniel Foe in the story. Coetzee challenges the authority of the colonial text by foregrounding the gaps, absences, and erasures that constitute it, thus inviting readers to question the validity of dominant historical and literary traditions.