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“The Coming of the Storm”: Imperial Empiricism and Ecological Indifference in Waiting for the Barbarians

Abstract: This article rereads J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians through an ecocritical lens, eschewing a postmodernist interest in a “metaphysics of absence” (Olsen 53) in favour of a materialist engagement with ecological presence. Readings of the novel that cite the absence of the eponymous “barbarians”—and Empire’s refusal to acknowledge this absence—as a central feature of the text routinely fail to recognize the presence of ecological forces that ultimately undermine Empire’s colonial project. By rectifying this critical oversight, this article’s rereading avoids endowing Empire with a problematic surfeit of narrative agency; moreover, it illuminates a relationship between Empire and ecology that cannot be reduced to the simplistic terms of binary difference and is better conceptualised as a dynamic of what I call “ecological indifference.” Finally, the article highlights parallels between the myopia of Coetzee’s Empire and a brand of critical imperialism that persists in “seeing through” literary ecologies. In this way, Barbarians can be read as a cautionary tale for the Anthropocene.