ABSTRACT In “Massa” and Mina(h) (2008), Zanele Muholi engages with the alterity of the South African domestic-worker figure by creating a narrative that employs libidinised energy to both transform and rigidify the “maid”/”madam” relationship between her two characters. The art-maker uses her subject matter and her high-artifice photographed performances to present tableaux that, as I discuss, subvert conventions accruing to black female Queer desire in visual and art historical genres. By mediating the mimetic image of a domestic worker through an eroticisation of the uniform worn by and the tasks routinely performed by black women as “maids”, Muholi steps with her Queer subjectivity into her memories of her own mother’s working role as a domestic worker. I focus here on ways in which this series, through its narrative fictions, explores the power dynamics that may emerge in interracial same-sex relationships within the context of South Africa’s traumatic histories. To this end, I employ Queer theoretical tools to position the sexuality presented in the series as a critique of hypocrisies that may appear to exist in heteronormative “race-” and class-bound domestic environments. I examine for instance how Muholi references the Venus pudica pose and the Renaissance trope of including lapdogs in odalisque boudoir paintings in order to unleash their subversive potential. This subversive potential also, I argue, reaches into sadomasochistic tropes to create theatrical and ritualised scenes that foreground through conversion the everyday cultures of power and negotiations of social risk and taboos – without obfuscating its interdependence and intimacies – that foster many of the complexities surrounding experiences of domestic service and its representations.

中文翻译：

---

Zanele Muholi 的“Massa”和Mina(h) 中“女仆”和“女士”的怪诞肖像

摘要在“Massa”和 Mina(h) (2008) 中，Zanele Muholi 通过创造一种叙事，利用力比多化的能量来转变和强化“女仆”/“女士”关系，从而与南非家庭工人的异质性互动在她的两个角色之间。这位艺术创作者使用她的题材和她高超的摄影表演来呈现画面，正如我所讨论的那样，颠覆了视觉和艺术史流派中黑人女性酷儿欲望的传统。通过对黑人女性所穿制服的色情化和黑人女性作为“女佣”日常执行的任务来调解家政工人的模仿形象，穆霍利将她的酷儿主观性带入了她对自己母亲作为家政工人的工作角色的记忆中。我在这里关注这个系列的方式，通过它的叙事小说，在南非的创伤历史背景下，探讨了跨种族同性关系中可能出现的权力动态。为此，我使用酷儿理论工具将系列中呈现的性行为定位为对可能存在于异性恋“种族”和阶级限制的家庭环境中的伪善的批判。例如，我研究了穆霍利如何引用金星pudica 姿势和文艺复兴时期的比喻，即在宫女闺房画中包括哈巴狗，以释放它们的颠覆性潜力。我认为，这种颠覆性的潜力也