FYI from BATR

We can see Disgrace as offering guilty white readers the opportunity to indulge in self-hatred and to savor the pleasure of contemplating the abasement of Western man and woman, while imagining a spiritual reward for doing so. (In his own life, as we have noted, Coetzee has foregone this bracing humiliation and has sought safety in the “cosmetic morality”—not to mention the physical safety and comfort—of the West.) But in order for Western man to luxuriate in this strangely titillating, if as yet only theoretical, picture of his own undoing, he also has to agree to accept the portrayal of South African blacks as incapable of living according to the rule of law and the demands of civilization. Accepting that portrayal is something for which the West should feel guilty, and there is the real disgrace. It turns out that denigrating “Western” morality ultimately means denigrating everybody.