This paper analyses the novel Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee in terms of the postcolonial theory by stating that the novel engages in a deconstructive mapping of the colonial violence in the geographical, narrative, linguistic, and bodily plane. Through the prefiguration of the marginal character of Michael K, a man of mixed race with restricted speech, Coetzee disrupts colonial cartographies, which divide people and places into systems of value and domination. The paper reveals the way in which violence in the novel is not an isolated and less physical act but is structurally embedded in institutions, discourses, and space practices that accrue to colonial rule. Tending to the geography of abandonment of the novel, the instrumentalization of law, the bureaucratic gaze, the subaltern tactics of withdrawal and reclamation, the present paper argues that Coetzee textualizes an ethics of unmapping and refiguration: it does not accept the colonial logics that only subject things can be seen as resources, threats or data. The article uses the postcolonial terms of coloniality of power, biopolitics, archival violence, and the strategies of subaltern speech to demonstrate how the silent and incessant agency of Michael K produces a counter-cartography which cannot be assimilated into nationalist or postcolonial teleologies. In conclusion, the paper recommends Life and times of Michael K as a model of thinking about decolonial memory and justice that is concerned about absence, nonlinearity and the reparative possibilities of dwelling.