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.

中文翻译：

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惩戒女性：南非对性别监视和暴力的文学表现

本文考虑了如何在女性作者的精选南非当代小说中对女性的性别行为和性行为进行监管的描述。通过对女性表征的女权主义文学分析，我将展示父权制纪律措施如何塑造女性角色在为固有不平等的性别现状服务的经历。仔细阅读这些文本表明女性期待不断的监视，并开始期待这种监视到了这样的程度，以至于他们在预先尝试避免各种类型的性别暴力时改变了自己的行为。这些文本中的女性角色意识到她们的性别行为和性行为正在受到监视和评判，任何偏离可接受规范的行为都会使她们变得脆弱。性别总是嵌入在特定的时间和空间环境中并由其产生。尽管我将分析的文本在非常不同的环境中代表女性角色，但不能忽视性别纪律措施的普遍性。根据年龄、种族、阶级和其他不同身份标记的交集，女性可能会以不同的方式体验这些警务策略。性，但他们都敏锐地意识到不符合性别期望会产生非常真实的后果，他们会相应地改变自己的行为。然而，他们的警惕往往被证明是徒劳的，因为男性暴力在他们的生活中经常发生，而且强度越来越大。我的分析表明，塑造这些女性所处社会的话语和结构性暴力决定了她们的一举一动，即使她们确实设法避免遭受身体暴力。可以看出，在性别和性行为受到永久性父权制监视的情况下，没有女性能毫发无损。