PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

The present paper studies John Maxwell Coetzee's Foe (1986) from Homi K. Bhabha's standpoint which parodies the conventional definition of master and slave. Unlike the conventional view that the slave is a passive being under the ultimate dominion of his/her master, Bhabha, by parodying the Master-Slave relationship through his concept of 'ambivalence', reveals that in particular moments the slave shows resistance and, thus, is an active agent. In Coetzee's novel, Friday— Cruso's and later Susan's slave—through various forms of resistance, like silence and disobedience, not only abrogates all of her attempts to dominate him, but also obliges her to change her strategy of dealing with him. He, although a slave, not only refuses to communicate in any way with Susan, but also refuses to obey her commands frustrating her in every possible way. In the end, the paper concludes that the colonised—in the novel represented by Friday—is not a passive figure as pictured in various colonial sources; instead, he/she is an active figure and has a significant role in shaping the colonizer's strategy of dealing with him/her.