From Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:
J.M. Coetzee (1940–), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in South Africa but left in the ’60s. Despite his PhD, he was denied permanent residency in the US owing to his involvement in anti-Vietnam war activism. He is an outspoken animal rights activist, and in his 2007 post-modern book of essays disguised as a novel (or is it a novel disguised as a book of essays?) Diary of a Bad Year, he described his politics as anarchist:
“If I were pressed to give my brand of political thought a label, I would call it pessimistic anarchistic quietism, or anarchist quietistic pessimism, or pessimistic quietist anarchism: anarchism because experience tells me that what is wrong with politics is power itself; quietism because I have my doubts about the will to set about changing the world, a will infected with the drive to power; and pessimism because I am skeptical that, in a fundamental way, things can be changed.”
In the same book, he decries democracy:
“[Democracy] does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian.”
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Tags: Living, Nobel Prize, South African
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