This essay considers a specific reading, framed within feminist identity politics, of an excerpt from Zoë Wicomb’s novel-in-stories, You can’t get lost in Cape Town (1987). In the story titled ‘Behind the Bougainvillea’, the reader is faced with a particularly ambiguous sexual encounter between the protagonist, Frieda Shenton, and Henry Hendrikse, a man Frieda had in her youth been romantically involved with. One reading, positioned within popular feminist discourse, locates the encounter as sexual violence, and more specifically, rape. In attempting to offer an alternative understanding, this essay posits that the encounter is not one of sexual violence against Frieda, but instead should be viewed as an exchange, where she acts agentially in presenting her body as apology for discriminating against Henry on the basis of race in the past. This complicated exchange, as I shall discuss in the article, becomes possible only because gender, understood here as a relationship of unequal power between women and men, as well as material reality, exists.

中文翻译：

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以性方式道歉：佐伊·威科姆 (Zoë Wicomb) 中的种族和性别 你不能在开普敦迷路

本文考虑了在女权主义身份政治框架内对佐伊·威科姆 (Zoë Wicomb) 的故事小说《你不能迷失在开普敦 (1987)》中的节选的具体解读。在题为“九重葛的背后”的故事中，读者面临着主角弗里达·珊顿和亨利·亨德里克斯之间一场特别暧昧的性接触，亨利·亨德里克斯是弗里达年轻时曾与之浪漫交往的男人。一种定位在流行的女权主义话语中的读物将遭遇定位为性暴力，更具体地说，是强奸。为了提供另一种理解，本文假设这次遭遇不是对弗里达的性暴力，而是应该被视为一种交换，在这种情况下，她主动地展示自己的身体，作为对基于歧视亨利的道歉过去的比赛。