The Layered Gaze: Reading Lesbian Desire in Selected South African Fiction

Abstract

This article offers a close textual analysis of the ways in which lesbianism is represented in two examples of contemporary South African fiction, namely Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf and Yvette Christiansë's Unconfessed. In an effort to challenge the erasure of lesbianism that characterises much of the scholarly engagement with these novels, the article focuses on the lesbian characters and the heteronormative male gaze through which other characters interpret lesbian desire. It emerges that heteronormative assumptions are deeply entrenched in the characters' understandings of lesbianism and this article regards the exposure of these assumptions as a first step in the authors' attempts to suggest alternative ways of reading lesbian desire.

Keywords:

• lesbianism
• heteronormativity
• gaze
• gender
• sexuality
• stigma

Notes

Although Triomf was originally published in Afrikaans in 1994, this article engages exclusively with Leon de Kock's English translation, which was published in 1999. Translation is always a complex endeavour and De Kock has written a number of excellent articles on the particular challenges involved in translating this novel (see De Kock 2003 and 2009). Some things inevitably get lost in translation. For example, in the original version, Van Niekerk uses the colloquial Afrikaans sexual term “naai” (Van Niekerk 1994: 177), which De Kock translates as the less evocative “fuck” in Lambert's descriptions of the lesbians' sexual encounter. There can be no doubt that such different terms have different impacts on readers. Yet, when it comes to translation, I follow Salman Rushdie (1991: 17) who notes: “It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained.”

The motivation for this crime falls beyond the scope of this article. For a discussion of the pressures and experiences that led to the infanticide, see Murray (2008).