Fathers and Sons: Structures of Erotic Patriarchy in Afrikaans Writing of the Emergency

Heyns examines the work of Mark Behr, Pierre de Vos and Koos Prinsloo to show the special relationship between male homosocial, including homosexual, desires and structures for maintaining patriarchal power as seen through the nexus of father and son. A disturbing potential of the double face of patriarchy is to attract the son into complicity with a repressive regime partly by the promise of phallic power and partly by the appeal of male tenderness.