Who Is Waiting For The Barbarians

According to his logic, anybody who does not belong to us, the “self” or the Empire, is an other. Furthermore, the people of the settlement see themselves as belonging to the Empire and those who are deemed as others to the Empire are considered others to the townspeople as well. In Waiting for the Barbarians, the Barbarians are described as fisher people, desert nomads, herdsmen and settled farmers “The barbarians, who are pastoralists, nomads, tent-dwellers, make no reference in their legends to a permanent settlement near the lake” (Coetzee 1999: p. 22). They live both near the Empire’s settlement and they also live far out in the unchartered lands of the desert. They speak some languages that are understood by imperials, and some languages that are also unfamiliar. When being defined in the story, they are simply whatever is not us. Thus, if they are not “us” then they must be “them”. And

The Magistrate can only comprehend what it means to be an other by experiencing what the alterity to the Empire experiences first-hand. It is when the Magistrate is imprisoned on charges of treason and then beaten by the Empire that he truly realises what it means to be an other, “He strikes, and I take the blow on the forearm. I hide my arm, lower my head, and try to grope towards him and grapple. Blows fall on my head and shoulders” (Coetzee 1999: p. 143). Through being stripped of his self-worth by the Empire, the Magistrate loses his position in society, and is then treated in the same way as the barbarians were treated. A true transformation in the Magistrate regarding alterity and its affirmation takes place as he becomes more open to “otherness”. He says, “my alliance with the guardians of the Empire is over, I have set myself in opposition, the bond is broken, I am a free man.” (Coetzee 1999: p.