To Write Liberty
Abstract
The keynote for the International Conference, Writing for Liberty, held in Cape Town in 2017
is a response to the contradictory demands made on writers: to respond to the suffering in the
world and to refrain from appropriating the pain of the marginalised. Taking a cue from Isaiah
Berlin’s analysis of the two kinds of liberties: liberty to be free and liberty from interference
with freedom, an argument is made for the freedom of a writer to write what she wants.
This freedom is radically tempered in a reading of some novels by JM Coetzee. Here I
explore the quality of skill, anguish and powerlessness to which a writer has to submit
within the structure of her text.