Money, Sex and Language: The Concept of Exchange in J. M. Coetzee’s *In the Heart of the Country*

One of the basic assumptions of this article is that the notions of “money” and “exchange” underlie, more or less explicitly, most of Coetzee’s novels. Hence, contrary to what many critics have suggested by directly or indirectly defining him as an escapist and irresponsible writer with no interest in the material reality of South Africa, my article implies that Coetzee’s interest in linguistic and textual matters enables him to expose the means adopted by the system to perpetrate its coercion and, whilst not dealing with these issues in a realistic way, to analyse the consequences to which imperialist drives (both metaphysical/ontological and material/economic) have led. In particular, my article focuses on the alienation the individual experiences on both a physical/material and a psychological/ontological level because of the oppression exercised by the regime and its language. Although this interest has remained a constant focus of Coetzee’s entire production, I will concentrate here on In the Heart of the Country (1977) and refer only occasionally to his other fictions. In this early novel the notion of economic exchange undergoes for the first time interesting transformations, ultimately becoming a metaphor for linguistic and communicative exchange.