Crime fiction centrally engages with questions of justice, yet often from the perspective of the detective or the criminal, thereby eliding the (conventionally female) victim. In the face of South Africa’s appalling levels of gender-based violence, some crime writers are seeking new ways to write the female victim. This article asks whether the genre allows for a foregrounding of the victim’s trauma and her resources. Drawing from studies on the gender dimensions of bearing witness, from postcolonial trauma theory and from scholarship on the ethics and aesthetics of representing the violated female body, it argues that the crime thrillers examined here expose and revise, yet at times also reiterate, gendered and racial assumptions about women as victims, women's suffering and the representation thereof.

中文翻译：

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她的尸体上写着谁的故事？通过重写南非犯罪惊悚片中的女性受害者来写作性别正义和转型

犯罪小说主要涉及正义问题，但通常是从侦探或罪犯的角度出发，从而忽略了（通常是女性）受害者。面对南非令人震惊的基于性别的暴力程度，一些犯罪作家正在寻找新的方式来写女性受害者。本文询问该类型是否允许对受害者的创伤及其资源进行前景分析。根据对见证的性别维度的研究、后殖民创伤理论以及代表被侵犯的女性身体的伦理和美学的学术研究，它认为这里审查的犯罪惊悚片揭露和修正，但有时也重申，性别化和关于妇女作为受害者的种族假设、妇女的痛苦及其代表。