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Phone: +27 46 603 8400
Email: M.Marais@ru.ac.za
Fax: +27 046 603 7507
Qualifications:
M.A. (UPE) Ph.D. (Univ of Jhb)
Biography
Professor Marais has published essays on postmodernism in fiction, theory of literature, contemporary South African fiction, and the novels of J.M. Coetzee.
Conferences Attended and Papers Read
“Presenting History: Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story.” 10th Biennial Conference on the Literature of Region and Nation, Manchester Metropolitan University, Alsager Campus, 3-6 August 2004.
“’I am not the person you know’: Misreading Disgrace.” 21st World Congress of the World Federation of Modern Languages Associations, Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, 2-5 July 2003.
“Visions of Excess: Ivan Vladislavi?’s The Restless Supermarket.” 9th Biennial Conference on the Literature of Region and Nation, University of Natal, 30 July - 2 August 2002.
“Death and the Space of the Response to the Other: J.M. Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg.” Plenary paper presented at an international conference on ‘J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Intellectual Practice’, University of Warwick, 26-27 April, 2002.
"The Rest Should Be Silence": Blanchot, Conrad, and the Impossibility of Silence.” AUETSA, Johannesburg, July 2001.
"Ethics and Engagement: J.M. Coetzee's Foe." FILLM (International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures), Harare, Zimbabwe, July 1999.
"Space, Ethical Responsibility, and Novelistic Representation." SAVAL, Johannesburg, June 1998.
"Telling Stories to Kill Others: The Novel and the Question of Responsibility for the Other." SAVAL, Pretoria, March 1997.
"Translation as Colonial Appropriation." European Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (EACLALS), Oviedo, Spain, March 1996.
"Colonialism and the Rise of the Novel." AUETSA, Pietermaritzburg, July 1995.
"'Journey to the Seed': A Reading of J.M Coetzee's 'The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee.’” European Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (EACLALS), Graz, Austria, May 1993.
"J.M. Coetzee's Age of Iron and the Role of Literature in Society." AUETSA, Port Elizabeth, July 1993.
"The Hermeneutics of Empire: Shades of Post-Colonialism in the Novels of J.M. Coetzee." SAVAL, Vanderbijlpark, March 1991.
"Denying or Defying History? John Fowles's A Maggot and Postmodernist Fiction." AUETSA, Stellenbosch, July 1990.
"Digesting Michael K/Michael K.” AUETSA, Pretoria, July 1989.
"The Tyrannical Text: A Reading of D.M. Thomas's Ararat." SAVAL, Umhlanga, April 1988.
"Authority in J.M. Coetzee's Foe." UNISA seminar, Pretoria, March 1988.
"Metafiction and Engagement." AUETSA, Grahamstown, July 1987.
Reviews
Approximately 10 reviews in local and overseas journals .
Research
Teaching and Research Interests: Twentieth-century metropolitan fiction; contemporary South African fiction; theory of literature.
Publications
“Bastards and Bodies in Zoë Wicomb’s David’s Story”. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 40.3 (2005): 21-36.
“Accommodating the Other: Derek Attridge on Literature, Ethics, and the Work of J. M. Coetzee.” Current Writing 17.2 (2005): 87-101.
“J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and the Task of the Imagination.” Journal of Modern Literature 29.2 (2006): 75-93.
"From the Standpoint of Redemption: Aesthetic Engagement and Social Engagement in J.M. Coetzee's Fiction of the Late Apartheid Period." Journal of Narrative Theory 38.2 (2008): 229-48.
“We know bugger-all about baboons: Nature and Exile in Justin Cartwright’s White Lightning.” English Academy Review, 20 (2003): 69-87.
“Reading Against Race: J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Justin Cartwright’s White Lightning and Ivan Vladislavi?’s The Restless Supermarket.” Journal of Literary Studies, 19.3/4 (2003): 271-289.
“’After the death of a certain god’: A Case for Levinasian Ethics.” Scrutiny2, 8.1 (2003): 27-33.
“An Interview with Ivan Vladislavi?.” English in Africa, 29.2 (2002): 119-128.
“Visions of Excess: Closure, Irony, and the Thought of Community in Ivan Vladislavi?’s The Restless Supermarket.” English in Africa, 29.2 (2002): 101-118.
"The Rest Should Be Silence": Blanchot, Conrad, and the Impossibility of Silence.” Journal of Literary Studies, 17.3-4 (2001): 182-195.
"Disarming Silence: Ethical Resistance in J.M. Coetzee's Foe." In: Nahem Yousaf (ed). Apartheid Narratives. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001, pp. 131-142.
“Impossible Possibilities: Ethics and Choice in J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals and Disgrace.” English Academy Review, 18 (2001): 1-20.
"Very morbid phenomena: 'Liberal Funk', the 'Lucy-syndrome' and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace." Scrutiny2, 6.1 (2001): 32-38.
"Literature and the Labour of Negation:J.M. Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 36.1 (2001): 107-125.
"The Novel as Ethical Command: J.M. Coetzee’s Foe." Journal of Literary Studies, 16.2 (2000): 62-85.
"The Possibility of Ethical Action: J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace". Litnet (June 2000): http://www.mweb.co.za/litnet/seminarroom/mmarais.asp
“J. M. Coetzee (1940- ).” Dictionary of Literary Biography (Volume 225: South African Writers), The Gale Group: Farmington Hills, MI, 2000, pp. 131-149.
"The Possibility of Ethical Action: J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace." Scrutiny2, 5.1 (2000): 57-63.
"'Liitle enough, less than little: nothing': Ethics, Engagement, and Change in the Fiction of J.M. Coetzee." Modern Fiction Studies, 46.1 (2000): 159-182.
"Place of Pigs: The Tension between Implication and Transcendence in J.M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron and The Master of Petersburg." Contemporary Literary Criticism, 117(Spring 1999): 87-93. (Rpt: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 31.1 (1996): 83-95.)
"Omnipotent Fantasies of a Solitary Self: J.M. Coetzee’s ‘The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee.’” Contemporary Literary Criticism, 117(Spring 1999): 51-59. (Rpt: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 28 (1993): 48-65.)
"Writing with Eyes Shut: Politics, Ethics, Post-Colonial Criticism and the Problem of the Other in the Fiction of J.M. Coetzee." English in Africa, 25.1 (1998): 43-60.
"Places of Pigs: The Tension between Implication and Transcendence in J.M. Coetzee's Age of Iron and The Master of Petersburg." In: S. Kossew (ed). 1998. Critical Essays on J.M. Coetzee. New York: G.K. Hall. (Rpt: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 31.1 (1996): 83-95.)
"Introduction: The Novel and the Question of Responsibility for the Other." Journal of Literary Studies, 13.1/2 (1997): 1-20.
"Places of Pigs: The Tension between Implication and Transcendence in J.M. Coetzee's Age of Iron and The Master of Petersburg." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 31.1 (1996): 83-95.
"’One of those islands without an owner’: The Aesthetics of Space in Robinson Crusoe and Life and Times of Michael K." Current Writing, 8.1 (1996): 19-32.
"Colonialism and the Epistemological Underpinnings of the Early English Novel." English in Africa, 23.1 (1996): 47-66.
"The Hermeneutics of Empire: Coetzee's Post-Colonial Metafiction." In: G. Huggan & S. Watson (eds). Critical Perspectives on J.M. Coetzee. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1996.
"Looking Backward to the 'New South Africa' -- J.M. Coetzee's Exploration of the Protocols of Travel Writing." Literator, 15.1 (1994): 21-32.
"'Who Clipped the Hollyhocks?': J.M. Coetzee's Age of Iron and the Politics of Representation." English in Africa, 20.2 (1993): 1-24.
"J.M. Coetzee's Age of Iron and the Role of Literature in South African Society." In: L. Louvel (ed.) J.M Coetzee. Poitiers: Université de Poitiers, 1994.
"Reading Postmodernism(s)." (Review article on B. McHale's Constructing Postmodernism, P. Waugh's Postmodernism: A Reader and Practising Postmodernism/Reading Postmodernism). Current Writing, 5 (1993): 134-141.
"'Omnipotent Fantasies' of a Solitary Self: J.M. Coetzee's 'The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee.’" The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 28 (1993): 48-65.
"Denying History or Defying history? John Fowles's A Maggot and the Postmodernist Novel." Literator, 12.3 (1991): 1-12.
"Languages of Power: A Story of Reading Coetzee's Michael K/Michael K." English in Africa, 16.2 (1989): 31-48.
"Interpretative Authoritarianism: Reading/Colonizing Coetzee's Foe." English in Africa 16.1 (1989): 9-16.
"The Deployment of Metafiction in an Aesthetic of Engagement in J.M. Coetzee's Foe." Journal of Literary Studies, 5.2 (1989): 183-193.
"The Political Potential of Postmodernist Narrative Strategies: The Case of D.M. Thomas's Ararat." Journal of Literary Studies, 4.4 (1988): 472-482.
"Fowles's Mantissa: Trying to Escape the Prison-house of Language." Journal of Literary Studies, 4.2 (1988): 196-208.
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