What is left behind

The role of Friday in J.M. Coetzee's Foe

Authors

  • Donata van der Rassel University of Amsterdam

Abstract

In this article the controversial character of Friday in the rewritten story of Robinson Crusoe Foe, is read as the remnant or l'objet petit a from the Lacanian symbolic realm to the real. The novel itself is read as an allegory of the symbolic coming of age of man where the inherent gap between meaning and language gives birth to a structural trauma.

Author Biography

  • Donata van der Rassel, University of Amsterdam

    Donata van der Rassel completed an MA in Literary Studies at the University of Amsterdam (cum laude). For her thesis she analyzed the way in which 'sense of self' is created within the field of literature. Using psychoanalysis (Freud, Lacan, Klein a.o.) and philosophical theory (Kant, Levinas, Baudrillard a.o.) she focused on the construction of 'identity' in three novels of the South-African contemporary writer J.M. Coetzee. The article published here is a modified version of the first chapter concerning the novel Foe. Currently, the author is preparing a thesis with the provisional title: "The Question of Gender: J.T. Leroy's 'Autobiographical' Novels" for a Research MA in Cultural Analysis.

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Published

2026-05-04

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 1 (2006): Diversen

Section

Main Section

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

van der Rassel, D. (2026). What is left behind: The role of Friday in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe. FRAME, Journal of Literary Studies, 19(1), 36-51. https://platform.openjournals.nl/FRAME/article/view/27524