The Meaning of Absence in Yvonne Vera’s Under the Tongue and Calixthe Beyala’s Your Name Shall be Tanga

Mellouk, Rebeh; Mehdi, Rachid

مجلة إشكالات في اللغة و الأدب
Volume 10, Numéro 1, Pages 635-648
2021-03-30

The Meaning Of Absence In Yvonne Vera’s Under The Tongue And Calixthe Beyala’s Your Name Shall Be Tanga

Authors : Mellouk Rebeh . Mehdi Rachid .

Abstract

Rape and incest are canonical concepts in the representation of sexual abuse in South African fiction where the female body is transgressed. Calixthe Beyala’s Your Name Shall be Tanga and Yvonne Vera’s Under the Tongue reveal the unethical perceptions of the female body accentuated through the social, historical and cultural rituals of female oppression and subversion. These women authors problematize silence as they convey their female protagonists’ traumatic sense of victimization and pain and represent ‘absence’ as a reality rooted in their psychological struggle. Silence and absence are very telling images because they mean emptiness and strongly reflect the social and emotional damage these females suffer. Throughout this article, I want to study the different meanings of ‘absence’ conveyed in these novels as protagonists, Tanga and Zhizha, forced to silence when struggling with the violent forces of rape and incest.