Masculinity as a field of meaning and a set of social practices allows us to read and understand the ongoing changes in different social environments. By choosing an angle of gender, race and violence in the analysis of male protagonists in literary works, we are able to detect the many insecurities that go along with forming and performing a response to what is expected and inscribed in a normative gender order in a postcolonial era, and what it means to be a man. In doing so, trauma-tization can serve as one concept to explain why a hegemonic masculinity is sought or subverted as in John’s case, in order to bear the pain of self-/estrangement. Im-portant to differentiate are the forms of trauma that we understand not only as the
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60 Alexie, Indian Killer… cit., p. 31.
61 Alexie, “Spokane Words.”… cit.
62 Meskell – Weiss, op. cit., p. 89.
consequences of a singular event but also as a way of transmitting powerful emo-tions such as distress and rage as well as modes of thinking to deny active involve-ment and responsibility across generations. When John is forcefully removed from his teenage mother “for his own good”, colonial thinking does not ask for the rea-sons of how this could happen but blames the guilt on the impregnated adolescent to justify John’s “rescue”. The colonial gender discourse implants itself: as a “real man”, John should be tough and able to overcome his identity crisis and use his education for a successful career, which he does not. As a “real warrior”, John wishes to kill a white man to relieve his pain, though he is unable to murder some-one, except to tragically end his own life. As a visitor of Indian powwows and sports tournaments, John does not dare to leave his role as a guest. Advances from Indian women, who want to dance with him, make him very insecure. John is too afraid to participate in the activities for fear of being exposed as someone without a tribe, as an “Indian in the most generic sense.”60
The degree of his traumatization exceeds John’s personal story. As he is unable to return to his place and family of origin, John is firmly linked to the generations of Indian communities, which have lost their children to the process of cultural eradication. Sherman Alexie himself emphasizes that Indian Killer “is a novel about, not just physical murder, but the spiritual, cultural and physical murder of Indians.”61 Alexie uses the motif of serial murder to offer a close look at the situa-tion of contemporary American Indian individuals and communities on and off the reservations. His novel echoes the mixed efforts, failures, hopes and resignation of Indian families to secure their survival. By not glossing over the hardships and ob-liquities that Indian men and women face in everyday life, Alexie succeeds to un-ravel the grid of male Indian and non-Indian violence, which is framed by different concepts of masculinities and the post/colonial discourses that motivate, influence and change them.
Coetzee’s text goes into a similar direction. His choice of genre is characterized by Meskell and Weiss as “non-nonfiction: a hybrid writing of history, social com-mentary, and fiction.”62 Coetzee is sensitive to the deep transformations of South African society and does not palliate strong emotions like fear and rage, which seethe under the surface between all sides. As much as David Lurie denies to ac-knowledge frankly his contribution in the perpetuation of violence between gen-ders and races, he deprives himself from growing and changing, from reforming and modifying his sense of masculinity. Still, the social dynamics do not allow him to retreat to music and animal welfare, alone. As his daughter Lucy decides to carry her child, conceived in a violent act, to full term, David cannot look away. Not on-ly does he have to accept the decision, he cannot escape to deal with his new role as a grandfather, in which he is offered the chance to contribute to the processes of reconciliation as the only basis to ensure life in peace in a postcolonial world.
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