Following the vigorous critique of orientalism, orientalist discourse had employed complex strategies to create ambivalent non-Western stereotypes. The earlier fixed oriental characters were often discarded; they were instead accorded certain amounts of flexibility. However, the fact was that despite such changes and these less negative images, orientalist discourse continued producing the Oriental other to perpetuate Western domination. In fact, it simply drew upon old repertoire of stereotypes, recycled them, and produced new ones; only care was taken that they did not sound as markedly negative as the old ones. The present paper sought to investigate how the American TV series Homeland (2011-) repeated the imperialist claims of the orientalist discourse by presenting a range of oriental character types, from the classic Muslim terrorist to some less negative characters. It employed “Negative formulas” to produce more ambivalent stereotypes to reinforce the alleged essential superiority of America. The series staged the character of the captive mind as the ideal oriental type to be imitated by all Orientals. The paper also demonstrated that how Homeland employed the orientalist theme of nativization, again only to prove the eventual un-contaminability and superiority of the West. Islam and Iran were the particular targets of Homeland’s stereotyping.

This paper holds that J. M. Coetzee’s novel, Life and Times of Michael K, demonstrates how apartheid, in order to preserve its domination over the nonwhite population of South Africa, as with other authoritarian regimes, commonly encouraged dependency. Its various institutions and camps aimed precisely to create a culture of dependence and to fashion subjects utterly dependent on the state. A dependent subject is a powerless, exploitable, and controllable subject; this is the right kind of subject for colonizers. The black majority of South Africa, then, could only have a parasitic existence, completely dependent on their white masters. The novel narrates how dependence is created through the false generosity of the state. As Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed argued, false charity is a state strategy that serves to reproduce the relations of domination. Coetzee’s novel, thus, suggests that to undermine the structure of domination, the oppressed have to reject the culture of dependence and the parasitic subjectivity that arise from the false generosity of the state.

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Coetzee's novel, Disgrace, constructs a disturbing picture of the state of post-apartheid South Africa. It was generally criticized on the ground that instead of sharing national enthusiasm, it damaged the hopes of constructing a just and nonracial society by perpetuating racial stereotypes and fueling interracial violence. Disgrace, however, this paper holds, is a realistic, though gloomy, narrative of human condition. It is the scene of individuals struggling for survival amid existential and social forces in post-apartheid culture. Apartheid represented the era of victimization, subjection, and pathological attachments. It distorted intersubjective relations, turned humans' interactions into power struggles, and produced deformed, stunted subjects. This paper examines the continuing presence of these deformed subjects in new South Africa and the violence that their presence occasions. The residual presence of character deformity and pathological intersubjectivity is a social reality of the new South Africa in Disgrace, a reality that diminishes the prospect of the promised sane society of post-apartheid era.

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