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Positive Bleeding: Violence and Desire in Works by Mlu Zondi, Zanele Muholi, and Makhosazana Xaba

In “Positive Bleeding,” I argue that allusions to blood in contemporary South African art and literature fruitfully link myriad stigmatized experiences and embodiments of self usually considered taboo, including HIV/AIDS, female sexuality, menstruation, and sexual violence. Through Mlu Zondi’s and Ntando Cele’s dance performance piece Silhouette (2005), Zanele Muholi’s mischievous and haunting photographic Period series (2006), and Makhosozana Xaba’s revisionist short story “Inside” (2008), blood is defiantly transformed from a remnant of personal and historic trauma into that which incites female–female pleasure and eroticism. I contend that the politics of visibility operate uncomfortably within all four texts; blood serves as both a reminder of and departure from sensationalized images of violence against lesbians.