Disciplining Women: South African Literary Representations of Gendered Surveillance and Violence. Issue 2 (3rd July 2018) - Murray, Jessica
Abstract : This article considers depictions of how women's gender behaviour and sexuality can be policed, in selected South African contemporary fiction by female authors. By offering a feminist literary analysis of women's representations, I will demonstrate how patriarchal disciplinary measures shape the experiences of female characters in service of an inherently unequal gendered status quo.A close reading of the texts suggest that women expect constant surveillance, and come to anticipate that surveillance to such an extent that they modify their behaviour in pre-emptory attempts to stave off gendered violence of various types. The female characters in these texts are aware that their gendered behaviour and sexuality are being watched and judged, and that any deviation from acceptable norms renders them vulnerable. Gender is always embedded in and produced by specific temporal and spatial contexts. Although the texts I will analyse represent female characters in very different settings, the ubiquity of gendered disciplinary measures cannot be ignored.The women may experience these policing tactics differently according to the intersections of other identity markers of difference such as age, race, class and sexuality, but they are all represented as acutely aware that a failure to conform to gendered expectations will have very real consequences and they vary their behaviours accordingly. Their vigilance, however, often prove to be futile as male violence recurs with often increasing intensity in their lives. My analysis suggests that the discursive and structural violence shaping the societies in which these women function determine their every move even when they do manage to stay safe from physical violence. It emerges that no woman remains unscathed in contexts where gender and sexuality are under permanent patriarchal surveillance.