Overview

Considering fiction from the colonial era to the present, State of Peril offers the first sustained, scholarly examination of rape narratives in the literature of a country that has extremely high levels of sexual violence.Lucy Graham demonstrates how, despite the fact that most incidents of rape in South Africa are not interracial, narratives of interracial rape have dominated the national imaginary. Seeking to understand this phenomenon, the study draws on Michel Foucault's ideas on sexuality and biopolitics, as well as Judith Butler's speculations on race and cultural melancholia. Historical analysis of the body politic provides the backdrop for careful, close readings of literature by Olive Schreiner, Sol Plaatje, Sarah Gertrude Millin, Njabulo Ndebele, J.M. Coetzee, Zoë Wicomb and others.Ultimately, State of Peril argues for ethically responsible interpretations that recognize high levels of sexual violence in South Africa while parsing the racialized inferences and assumptions implicit in literary representations of bodily violation.

Full Product Details

Author:   Lucy Valerie Graham (Research Fellow, Research Fellow, University of Western Cape)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 23.90cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 16.50cm
Weight:   0.530kg
ISBN:  

9780199796373

ISBN 10:   0199796378
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   24 May 2012
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

"Preface Introduction 1. Danger and Desire: Rape and Seduction in the Colonial Imagination ""Wild Savages"" and ""Treasure Chests"": Rape and Romance in Southern African Contact Narratives ""A Black Woman Wasn't White!"": Race and Rape in Olive Schreiner's Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland ""The Inexpiable Outrage Remains"": Black Combatants, Chivalry and the South African War 2. ""Like a White Man"": ""Black Peril"", Print Culture and Political Voice in the Making of the Union ""Wholly Bestial and Mad with Burning Revenge"": (Dis)enfranchisement and Contest in Francis Bancroft's Of Like Passions ""Catching her by the Throat"": Political and Literary Struggles in George Webb Hardy's The Black Peril ""His Sonorous Voice"": George Heaton Nicholls Bayete! and the Black Vote 3. ""A 'Black' or a 'White' Peril?"": Writing the Melancholy (Alter)Nation Daphne Rooke's Mittee in America and South Africa 4. Restaging Rape: Black Writing and Sexual Apartheid ""Black Peril"" and Mimicry in Arthur Maimane's Victims ""White Peril"" Narratives by Farida Karodia and Lauretta Ngcobo ""When Victims Spit on Victims"": Intraracial Rape in Short Stories by Njabulo Ndebele, Gcina Mhlophe and Baleka Kgositile 5. ""History Speaking"": Sexual Violence and Post-Apartheid Narratives Reading the Unspeakable: Rape in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace Traces of Violation in Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit and Zoë Wicomb's David's Story ""(Not) Like a Woman"": Male Rape in Bildungsromane of the Post-Apartheid Transition ""Save Us All"": Tshepang and the New Nation Conclusion Bibliography Index"

Reviews

<br> This is a highly original, stimulating, and intelligent book that breaks new ground in literary-cultural studies of South Africa. --Laura Chrisman, author of Rereading the Imperial Romance: British Imperialism and South African Resistance in Haggard, Schreiner, and Plaatje<p><br> State of Peril offers a radical alternative history of South African literature, showing the degree to which its imaginative core has been consistently engaged with issues of race and gender violence. --Robert J.C. Young, author of Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race<p><br>

Author Information

Lucy Valerie Graham is a Lecturer in English at Stellenbosch University.

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