Hegemonic practices of memorialization rely on narratives of heroic, morally untainted resistance, which cast traitors as the aberrant “other.” This paper draws on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity and historical and sociological accounts of betrayal to trouble this binary and construct a framework for memorializing betrayal in its ambiguity—in relation to the everyday reality of tragic dilemmas that resisters face. I show how attentiveness to the ambiguity of betrayal can help rethink heroic resistance myths beyond the exclusionary logic (...) pitting moral purity against the depravity of treason—and warn against the reproduction of systematic practices of othering in the new political order. The paper develops the political relevance of this theoretical exploration via the example of a South African novel, The Texture of Shadows, examining how its insights into the ambiguity of betrayal challenge the myths of heroic resistance in South Africa. (shrink)

The article aims to expose and contest the gendered representation of betrayal in resistance movements. For a theoretical framework, I draw on Simone de Beauvoir’s critique of masculinist myths of femininity inThe Second Sex, combined with contemporary feminist scholarship on the oppressive constructions of female subjectivity in debates on war and violence. I trace how the hegemonic visions of virile resistance tend to subsume the grey zones of women’s resistance activity under two reductive myths of femininity – the self-sacrificial mother (...) and the seductivefemme fatale– while obscuring the complexities of betrayal arising from women’s embodied vulnerabilities. I demonstrate the political relevance of this theoretical exploration on the example of two representative French Resistance novels, Joseph Kessel’sArmy of Shadowsand Roger Vailland’sPlaying with Fire. (shrink)