Understanding Sexual Violence through its Timing in Kagiso Lesego Molope’s This Book Betrays my Brother

Abstract

In this article, I seek to understand why male sexual violence happens. I look specifically at the temporalities, and inevitably the spatialities, of a rape incident in the novel This Book Betrays my Brother by Kagiso Lesego Molope. In other words, I seek to answer the question: how does the timing of the rape enhance our understanding of why the rape happens and how the perpetrator conceives it? My feminist analysis combines theories of sexual violence and theories of women’s time to unravel the motive for rape as represented in Molope’s novel. Through the analysis, I extrapolate three major arguments from the novel: first, that male sexual violence is the result of masculine territorialisation of women’s bodies; second, that the rape of lesbian and bisexual women is the result of heterosexual men’s failure to accommodate alternative sexualities, hence their action to “discipline” the deviant bodies of women for transgressing the patriarchal sexual order; and lastly, that intra-racial sexual violence in particular is a consequence of the black man’s desire for revenge against racial denigration.

Opsomming

 Hierdie artikel het ten doel om te verklaar waarom manlike seksuele geweld plaasvind. Ek ondersoek spesifiek die temporalieë, en noodwendig die ruimtelikhede, van 'n verkragtingsvoorval in die roman This Book Betrays my Brother deur Kagiso Lesego Molope. Met ander woorde, ek poog om die volgende vraag te beantwoord: hoe verbeter die tydsberekening van die verkragting ons begrip van waarom die verkragting plaasvind en hoe die oortreder dit bedink? My feministiese ontleding kombineer teorieë van seksuele geweld en teorieë van vroue se tyd om die beweegrede vir verkragting, soos voorgestel in Molope se roman, te ontrafel. Deur my ontleding ekstrapoleer ek drie belangrike argumente uit die roman: eerstens, dat manlike seksuele geweld die resultaat is van manlike territorialisering van vroue se liggame; tweedens, dat die verkragting van lesbiese en biseksuele vroue die resultaat is van heteroseksuele mans se onvermoë om alternatiewe seksualiteite te akkommodeer, daarom hul handeling om vroue se afwykende liggame te “dissiplineer” vir oortreding van die patriargale seksuele orde; en laastens, dat intraras-seksuele geweld in die besonder 'n gevolg is van die swart man se begeerte vir wraak teen rasse-verkleinering.