Abstract: »This essay commences by exploring Judith Butler's theory of vulnerability, using two rape cases from J. M. Coetzee's novel, Disgrace, to examine the different vulnerable states that female victims experience. Melanie Isaacs becomes a sexual victim when her voice and subjectivity are erased following her sexual abuse by David Lurie. In contrast, Lucy Lurie's trauma from the rape leads to her transformation from a passive sexual victim into a Butlerian agent with vulnerability. Disgrace also sheds light on the unequal distribution of precarity in the neoliberal South Africa: issues like sexual violence, class distinctions, and racial tensions are often overlooked by the government and unfairly dealt with in the legal system. Such a vicious cycle of precarity and legal exclusion has persisted since the apartheid era. Lucy's rape underscores the limitation of achieving justice through legal means or revenge, and her pregnancy suggests that breaking the short-circuited cycle between the law and violence may involve suspending the law's overwhelming dominance and allowing subjugated citizens to express their own ideas about what they have been through.« (Source: Airiti Library)

Wikipedia: History of Africa: History of South Africa / History of South Africa (1994–present) | Literature: South African literature / J. M. Coetzee | Literature: Novels about rape / Disgrace | Sex and the law: Rape / Sexual violence in South Africa