Both Die ding in die vuur by Riana Scheepers and Gedigte 1989-1995 by Antjie Krog are characterized by a profound interest in women in relation to their bodies. As Luce Irigaray (1981:100) and Helene Cixous (1981:256) have indicated, it is essential to approach the debate about female subjectivity from the discourse of the body. Irigaray believes that women will accede to subjectivity from an experience of their bodies as multiple and diverse. In the short stories of Riana Scheepers the bodies of women are depicted as confiscated and destroyed by the discourses of both African and Western patriarchy. However, the writing of Scheepers does not mobilize the constructive potential of the female body to create a new subjectivity. In her poetry Antjie Krog engages the female body in a transitory exploration of the masculine other. An analysis of "ek staan op 'n
moerse rots langs the see by Paternoster" leads to the conclusion that the female speaker in this poem by Krog emerges from her non-appropriating journey through the masculine other within sight of a feminine subjectivity based on the liberating potential of the female body.
