HumanitiesEthnic StudiesLiteratureBlack Intellectual HistoryDiscriminationLiterary CriticismAfrican American Literary CriticismAfrican American Literary StudiesBlack Literary CriticismBlack StudiesRacismWhite SupremacyEthical MeaningLiterary Representations Of RaceRacial Discourse
This essay raises questions about the authorship and representativeness of the ANC's response to Disgrace in its submission to the South African Human Rights Commission's hearings into racism in the media. It shows that this response, or the putative reading it is taken to represent, racializes events in the novel in ways that are not supported in the text; it then explores how Disgrace actually deals with racial discourse. It concludes by showing that the novel absorbs race into other, arguably more encompassing, categories of historical and ethical meaning.