The Power of Non-Verbal Communication in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe

J. M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986) has been heralded as a record of the trajectory of the English novel and as a postcolonial retelling of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). It is also a testament both to the power and, ironically, to the latent limitations of language - language as an expression of truth and as the antithesis of silence. With the sleight-of-hand of a magician, the wordsmith is seen as being divinely inspired. Logocentrism is considered as a challenge to phonocentrism. However, Friday’s truth is witnessed through non-verbal communication via the medium of the performing arts, in its variety of forms. In ascertaining his true identity, the reader is taken on a journey through the pain of the untold history of slavery and subjugation in the hope of reaching a post-colonial utopia. The divine dimensions associated with Friday - ensnared in a mesh of words - are revealed in the magic of his respectful, Sangha-, or Buddhist–like rituals. Acting as a subaltern, he resorts to mimicry to express defiance of the Other as a muted form of protest. Highly receptive to the dynamic, liberating influence of music and dance, Friday spins - in his dervish-like way - not a tale, but an unnamed jig akin to the sixteenth-century, African Capoeira; to the cathartic, Trinidadian Calypso; and to the venerating, Buddhist Circumbulation. Indeed, it is Friday’s non-verbal communicative abilities which empower him to speak his mind – not through words, but through “the slow stream” of his uninterrupted, syllabic, aquatic messages.