Burger, Bibi2021-05-212020Bibi Burger (2020) Apartheid Colonialism, Gendered Crime, and the Domestic Gothic in Mary Watson’s The Cutting Room, Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, 32:1, 2-9, DOI: 10.1080/1013929X.2020.1743024.1013-929X (print)2159-9130 (online)10.1080/1013929X.2020.1743024http://hdl.handle.net/2263/80005Mary Watson’s gothic novel, The Cutting Room (2013), deals with a woman who does not feel at home in her house. Her unease can be attributed to her conflicted feelings about being a wife in South Africa’s colonial and apartheid history, as well as to a fear of crime. Using feminist theories of women’s relationship to the domestic sphere, Freud’s writing on the unheimlich as well as Homi K Bhaba’s notion of the “postcolonial unhomely”, I argue that the genre of the gothic provides appropriate metaphors and an aptly uncanny atmosphere for the exploration of a South African woman’s complex relationship with the home.en© 2020 The Editorial Board, Current Writing. This is an electronic version of an article published in Current Writing, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 2-9, 2020. doi : 10.1080/1013929X.2020.1743024. Current Writing is available online at : http://www.tandfonline.comloi/rcwr20.Feminist gothicPostcolonial literatureSouth African novelMary Watson (1975-)Humanities articles SDG-05SDG-05: Gender equalityPostprint Article