The menace of rape and reconstruction of identities in selected works of Coetzee, Mda and Tlhabi

Abstract

Writers in South Africa have actively written on topics on the rape and identity issues within the South African social and psychic spaces. However, studies on these contested matters have tended to overlook how apartheid has metamorphosed its form in post-apartheid times. This study investigates the allegorical and satirical representation in literature of the menace of rape and reconstruction of identities, and the treatment of women as subalterns within the South African social and political spaces. The study demonstrates how rape is a menace that causes lasting trauma and how it has eaten deep into the social fabric, thereby normalising violence. Violence is a tool to sustain oppression, in this context it was heightened during apartheid, and how it has continued even in post-apartheid times. Identity is then reassessed through the lens of the characters to determine how it has been constructed and reconstructed from apartheid into the post-apartheid era. By exploring the various themes in the selected literary texts, this study gauges the representations of rape and identity in fictional and biographical works to the struggle for emergence, voicing and agency. In exploring Mboti’s position on apartheid studies, the study engages Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory (SIT) and Spivak’s subaltern theory to understand the corporeally manifest issues on rape and identity in the selected narratives for this study. There is an obvious concern with how identities are crafted, negotiated, and performed in the texts selected for this study on South African literature. Identity in this study is linked to race, colour, gender, position, and power. The SIT helps explain the country’s racial, gender and political divides and the inherent disadvantages and consequences of such normativity. The study concludes that despite the changing landscape in South Africa, the narratives demonstrate that there is no sufficient agency for girls and women due to the highly masculinised and patriarchal nature of the post-apartheid society. However, there are a few exceptions to the rule, like Popi, who against all odds, finds her voice and becomes a new embodiment for emancipation and change in post-apartheid South Africa as depicted in The Madonna of Excelsior. Silence is a powerful tool authorised by patriarchal social norms and used in entrenching the female gender as subalterns. Women are continually raped, marginalised and denied a voice. This research recommends that there needs to be a balance in gender, race, and power relations to reduce the continued impact of racism, rape, violence, and power abuse in identity formation in South Africa