This book addresses the recovery of submerged memories loss and trauma in self-avowed
intertextual fiction while simultaneously exposing the tensions and untenability of any stable
figuration of alterity. Otherness thus posits a liminal and largely transversal site of
resistance to monological representations of Western identity history and canon which are now
displayed inherently crossbred and built on the occulting and alienating of difference. With
this in view the author carries out a close reading of the works and scholarly statements of
J. M. Coetzee and Marina Warner by taking as the point of departure the intertextualist
approaches that most attend to the phenomenon of alterity against the critical discourses of
modern representation. Fully installed in the revision of canon policies Foe and Indigo
re-read Eurocentric institutionalised forms of othering at the same time they posit new and
suggestive rehearsals of identity languages via literature. Intertextual fiction thus turns out
to be a powerful instrument to render alterity visible and agential in the discourses of
reality. Ultimately alterity is enabled to speak and invite social change and ethical
awareness without denying the history of its alienation.
