Sex Beyond Consent in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o's Petals of Blood

Wright, Malia

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Sex Beyond Consent in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o's Petals of Blood Public Deposited

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/h415pb60j

Alternative Title

Sex Beyond Consent

Abstract

This thesis examines the episodes of rape, prostitution, and consensually ambiguous sex in the postcolonial African novels Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Drawing on scholarship on sexual consent, it argues that the liberal theories of sexual consent are rigid and it offers an alternative way to consider sex that recognizes the complexities of human nature, the connection between identity and sexuality, the limits of autonomy, and the roles of male dominance and female subordination engrained in patriarchy. The analysis also takes into account the distinct social environments of postcolonial Kenya and post-Apartheid South Africa and the ways that racial identities and colonialism complicate sexual consent.

This thesis engages with existing critical work on the novels and liberal theories of consent. There is little scholarship about sexual consent for either primary text, or among postcolonialists in general. For this reason, the thesis reads the sexual relationships in the novels through consent theories that, like liberalism, were created in the United States and Europe. In their work, scholars like Ann Cahill, Carole Pateman, David Archard, and Catherine MacKinnon critique the dependence of theories of consent on the liberal democratic values of individualism and autonomy, and challenge the understanding that humans have possessive ownership of themselves and are abstractly equal in society. This thesis extends their arguments that this notion of sexual consent is reductive and does not consider the intensities of human desires and the limited agency of marginalized groups from patriarchal societies to the postcolonial context. Central to the plot of Disgrace is a student-professor relationship and the rape of a white woman by Black men. These events present ideal locations to explore the nuances of rape and intercourse and the ways that social constructions of race and gender infiltrate sex. Petals of Blood follows four protagonists, one of whom is a woman, Wanja, who is sexually promiscuous and has spent many years as a prostitute. Her beauty and sexuality led her to attract many men who feel powerless with desire. Her time as a sex worker and her mobility in her sexual relationships provide complex circumstances for an analysis of possible female agency.

In exploring the ways that sex is a private and personal action but also a socially and politically constructed human behavior, this thesis analyzes what is right or wrong about episodes of sex that go beyond only consent. In doing so, it finds ways that women can have sexual agency beyond consent as a form of contract. This thesis ultimately pushes for sexuality to be understood as fluid and for social constructions of sexuality to be recognized to allow both women and men to find ways that sex can be safe, equal, and fulfilling.

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