Problematizing
the Geo Politics: Black Identity in Contemporary African American Women’s
Theatre
Dr. Shanta Surejya,
Assistant Professor (English),
Udit Narayan P.G. College,
Padrauna, Kushinagar,
Uttar Pradesh, India.
Abstract: The
concept of Geo politics brings to our attention the fact that every political
ideology practiced by a particular state is resultant of the geographical
setting that it has and how in turn it strengthens the grasp of the state on
the fellow nations’ culture and economy. In this paper I examine the fragmented
and unstable nature of black identity in America articulated in the plays of
contemporary African American women dramatists- Suzan-Lori Parks and Lynn
Nottage. The collective subjugation of the “black” lot and the disturbed frame
of mind of an individual who strives to break away from such definitions and
stigmas is the background in which these two playwrights have focused outcrying
the deformity it has levied upon the black consciousness since forever.
Historically, the geo political strong hold of the USA has had a great impact
upon the lives of black people who were brought as slaves to work in
plantations of the promised land. In the course of time what was promised
became a myth and the challenge of getting acknowledged as humane emerged as
reality. The geographical gift of lighter skin color has been used as a perquisite
to practice tyranny over the ‘other’ having darker skin tone. The paper
problematizes the nature of control that the geo political affluence of the USA
gained it over the ingenuous black souls. An evaluation of the development of
black consciousness through history is also attempted appreciating their
perturbing journeys of finding a medium to vocalize the struggles for
recognition and making themselves feel “belonged”.
Keywords: Theatre, Black Consciousness, Identity, Geo
Politics, Race, African American Women Dramatists
The area of geo-politics looks for the
geographical advantage as encouraging the political situation of any country
and its impact upon the neighboring and less developed countries. The sea
voyage which brought the English to ‘the newfound land’ and the new settlers to
the distant charms of African continent was solely responsible for the
deracination of blacks as slaves from their mother countries. The middle
passage had a transformational impact as it converted them from one category of
being to the ‘non-being’- from humans to slaves. The political subservience of
countries like Africa under the imperialist regime of America ripped the latter
of its human as well as political resources. The ‘scramble’ that was for Africa
depleted the mother nation of its credulity and enslaved its very children to
serve as planters on the white fields and yield what was not to be theirs.
Ironically the ‘promised land’ failed to stand out in providing even normal
living condition to the darker ones. What Ralph Ellison opined – ‘geography is
fate’ emerged as reality for the entire black lot because their fates had
already been decided by the skin colour which their geographical situation
imparted. The biological skin colour of the blacks in the course of time stood
out to be synonymously identified with stigma that segregated them from what
normally was humane. Mostly equated with animalistic traits, their identity was
curated and stuffed with stereotypes that wrecked their chances of fair life in
the very first place. The situational positioning of these people has been a
slap on the face of humanity since forever. Darker the race, more wretched
turns out the treatment they receive at the hands of the ‘fairer’ ones. This
has been a persistent issue throughout the globe where colour has been
determinant of one’s identity. Haki Madhubati speaking on this discourse of
infringement of identity of African Americans acknowledges:
One of the
tragedies of Black life in America is that too many Black people never acquire
insight into their own existence. They just do not know who they are. And, this
confusion about identity and source is at core of our ignorance. The Afrikans
have a saying: ‘If you don’t know who you are, any history will do...Afrikan
American people have little knowledge of themselves. We are products of a slave
history, a Eurocentric world-view, that by definition cannot be developmental
or inspirational. (ii)
The process of
knowing the present context of one’s identity would remain deficient without
reclaiming what the past clasped. The excavation of past is to some extent
contingent upon memory and thus the role of latter in precisely marking the
zeitgeist becomes essential. The
genealogy of oneness is required to be asserted for the black consciousness to
take a shape.
Residing on the margins of the society are not
only these colored people but also their histories, the alternate side of the
greatness that America gradually became an embodiment of. The post-emancipation
era has remained equally tough for the African Americans. The horrifying civil
war and the policies of the states which later perfidiously contained the
prejudices of pre-war America stunted the development of African Americans.
Mostly to show on the world portal how America was ruling out racial practices
it began funding a few Jazz musical tours in the 1960s. The popularity of
‘jazz’ as a form of artistic representation although gained recognition
worldwide but the source of agony that mellowed its tune was yet to get probed.
Besides, at the ground level Jim Crow laws still legalized segregation at
public places and schools. During the period of the second world war black
thinkers like W.E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore started associating the
African American struggle for equality and dignity with the anticolonial
movement of several colonies of Euro-American regime. Walter White, the
president of NAACP wrote in latter relation-
World War two
has given to the Negro a sense of kinship with other colored-and oppressed
peoples of the world…the struggle of the Negro in the United States is part and
parcel of the struggle against imperialism and exploitation in India, China,
Burma, Africa, the Philippines, Malaya, the West Indies, and South America.
(144)
The post-war era
saw American foreign policies hardly caring for the state of black people. The historical significance of these policies
which restrained the overall advancement of black people can be assessed from
the tumults they came across which vividly found wide representation in the
literature of the period thus deserving worthwhile attention.
The problems straggling the African American survival has received addressal through various means, arts being the one. Drama has proved out to be an alluring medium to articulate the essential concerns of the groups and ethnicities residing on the fringe. African Americans have had one such difficult relationship to live by in a country where they didn’t naturally belong and yet they did. They contributed equally towards building up of America as a nation we know of today but their worth has always been weighed down by the darkness of their skin tint. The stand of America since its beginning years of development had been clear to establish a neo-imperialistic relationship with developing or underdeveloped nations. On the other side of this relationship rested the real interests of people of the deprived nation who in turn were startled of the enigmatic behavioral practices of the promisers of a better world. With the advent of Harlem Renaissance history witnessed a surge in the number of artists using art as an implement to voice out their griefs and nightmares which they lived through. Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, and Jean Toomer were some of the prominent practitioners of drama who chose theatre above other streams of arts to strengthen the rage of revolt. The stories enacted in their plays were telling tales of excruciating tussles that they have been dealing with for attainment of a dignified living condition. The indispensable prerequisite for life was the soul area of focus for the early playwrights which in due course took avant-garde form in the plays of Adrienne Kennedy who looked for the psychological pathology of her characters who were very much representations of traumas that prowled beneath the darkness that persevered in their everyday lives. The scenario of contemporary African American theatre is different in terms of the manner of portrayal brought in experimentation and the themes that geo politically have been hurting African American sentiments even after so many years of emancipation. The emancipation was mostly on the papers but the reality had a different story to tell which was severely overlooked and outcasted from the nuclei of American history. The fear of south for the confederacy to get restored and the tragic end of Lincoln who pioneered the vision of equality among its people have been certain turning points in the struggle for equality. The plays of Suzan-Lori Parks are mostly known for revising histories which formidably stands tall as a witness to the geopolitical relationship between the continents and their respective cultures. Reframing various versions of the event, she focuses upon the inconsistencies that historiographic representation conveys. One of her plays Topdog/Underdog (2001) actually revives the character of Lincoln and Booth who enact the assassination scene to actually get acknowledged, feel identified. Dealing primarily with African American identity and history, Parks’ theatre deconstructs the chastened history of blacks in America. The role of drama in shaping and reforming the perception of the audiences is vital in her dramaturgical innovations. In the course of ‘re-membering’ and revising the institutionalized history Parks renders the imposed identities which has been tarnishing the black souls since the days of their enslavement. Through her plays she questions the garb of rationality which the white masters tugged onto for the furtherance of their “civilizing missions”. Philip C. Kolin in her work on Suzan-Lori Parks writes: “Parks’s plays exist in a world where time, space, and consequence slip and slide away from the strict obligations of logic. Her characters are displaced versions of themselves, trying to find their identity—in a family, a city, a nation, a continent, the universe”(1).
The background and setting of her plays symbolize the fear that hovers over the physical as well as mental state of her characters. Her theatre provides ways to examine all possible paths of arriving at meaning and thus efforts to incubate an identity that is very much of one’s own rather than sustaining in relation to the other. Another play that had built itself on the character of Lincoln was The America Play (1993). Implementing the ‘rep & rev’ technique this play too tries to present an alternate version of history which might endow the un-inherited minds with a solace they desire. The great hole of history is tried to fathom with several strikes made towards unearthing it of its concealed secrets, untold truths. The performance of Lincoln’s death scene in both the above-mentioned plays reflects back upon the sunken stature of minds of the blacks. It further highlights the political affluence of theatre as shown in the name of the protagonist in The America Play: ‘The Lesser Known’. It is the lesser known who earns by performing at the carnival and feels distinguished only after being shot dead as Lincoln. The excruciating pain that loss of identity brings one is referenced in this character as he continually digs for living and performs as Lincoln for amusement. The act of digging is in relation to Foucault’s genealogy which seeks to locate “the ancestral burial ground, dig for bones, find the bones, hear the bones sing, write it down”. (Parks, The America Play, 6). The dichotomy of mere survival and living usurps the very soul of blacks as constantly their identity stayed in flux. Deborah R. Geis writes of Parks’ plays that her “works confront cultural constructions of history and literature” (1). What she makes evident is the constructive nature of history that on the time line has been created by the authoritative forces. The reach of spectacle is questioned by Parks and thus her plays traverse the dimensions of physical realm. The act of writing plays is alike to the attempt of imaginatively filling the spaces. Her’ is a theatre that tries to uplift the communities of colored people by bringing to light the concerns of identity and disrupted psyches in the process. The vestiges of the past are probed to know what else might have transpired thus improvising the existing knowledge. The jeopardy which their identities cope with is the central theme of most of the contemporary black plays around which is woven the inquisitive venture to centrifuge the truths regarding their inheritance and ancestry.
The plays of Lynn Nottage are equally
concerned with characters sometimes perturbed by the social truths or the myths
whichever surrounds them. She counters the narrative presented to the people by
decentralizing the position of the narrator and delimiting the set rhetoric of
depiction and representation. She goes into the past in her plays to establish
a connection with the present. The diminished identities of the blacks are
treated by various strategies of valuing the past and the plays challenges the
dominant socio-cultural gaze that has done the job of limiting them in terms of
opportunities. The dominant class rift which segregates the people and Nottage
aims at tracing the invisible. Her Pulitzer winning play Ruined (2009) is
actually set in the Congo and it portrays the sexual assault of women, their
vulnerable nature of being raped during war. Drawing from Brecht’s Mother
Courage Nottage tells a similar tale of mutilation and loss to convey the
political message about the complex relationship a woman tends to have with
war. The geography of Africa has laden it with abundance of natural resources
which has also brought it an unfortunate chaos. Political implication of the
play could be traced right away from here as it grounds its narrative on this ill-fated
state of African states with women at its heart as supreme sufferers of all
forms of oppression- racial, patriarchal, economical, etc. Jennifer- Scott
Mobley in her article “Melodrama, Sensation, and Activism in Ruined”
identifies the play as practicing a “dramaturgy of reform” (129). It’s
antithetical nature to Brechtian alienation effect makes its tenacity to
articulate the voice of the blacks who themselves are different, in a unique
manner. Nottage emphasizes upon the role of spectators and impact a thoughtful
spectacle can have in spreading the word. The plight of the protagonist Mama
Nadi in this play is no different as across the world as she is a victim to
lewd patriarchal dominance that least pays any heed to the needs of black
women. Multiple layers of oppression and the various struggles to break every
taboo and boundaries that negates their very existence has hampered the
development of an ethnic group like African women to the core. The essence of identity gets depleted in the
process of procuring the basic necessities required for survival. Similar
fragmentation of identity finds representation in another play of Nottage’s
i.e., Las Meninas, where an African dwarf becomes an object of amusement
for the French queen and the outcome of this alliance is made to swear to a
nunnery as her obedience to the realm stays questionable because of her
lineage. Nottage’s characters are united by their skin complexion from all
across the world denoting the extent of racism and its hegemonizing dominion.
Often scoffed at for their appearance, the blacks have earned only humiliation
and derided treatment across the globe because of their skin complexion. What
was initiated by Europe and given a shape by America has flourished across the
world in the form of stigmas and bigotry lagging the proper progress of black
people across the world. The contemporary theatre of African Americans has been
trying to instill a sense of post-blackness which the advent of Obama era has
introduced the world with. The long-institutionalized bigotry requires
interrogation and this exactly is what the plays above dealt are trying to
achieve. The disgrace that their color invited needs an intervention as it can
never be one’s external impression which could define what transpires within.
Charted along the historical and political timeline the plays delve deep to
arrive at a negotiating point and are incorporations of possibilities for the
African American cultural identity. The notion of cultural identity is
extremely complex for African Americans as the area demands for a sense of
history and belonging which the race stifles for. Identity by its very
definition seeks for acknowledgement or denial by the ‘other’, the notion of
sameness has to be negated for the attainment of uniqueness of self. Therefore,
for a black self to secure an identity that is very much of its own it has to
reinstate its individuality and reclaim its distinction as a race that
perceives beyond color
The geo political situation of America has
quite helped it in practicing its imperial hold on other nations worldwide.
Vaughan Rasberry in Race and Totalitarian Century: Geopolitics in the Black
Literary Imagination, writes that the geopolitics of the superpowers as
expansionist in nature who try to consume the dwelling spaces of the natives.
This attitude has persisted since the cold war era as the contention for power
has gained newer dimensions. The African countries are still sufferers of such
interference by political super-powers and the yearning to be free from labels
attached to their identities persist even today. The acquiescent geopolitics of
neo-imperial powers puts forth a challenge for the black consciousness to stand
in unison and fight against the active policies of degeneration. Freely
practicing its hypocrisy, the disarray has impaired the conscience of blacks
residing in America. The digression from facing the conflict together in trying
to sustain the momentum of the struggle has featured as a grave problem for
them to propagate their demands of equality and recognition beyond color. Lynn
Nottage views this ideological difference as heterogeneity of black Americans
who bear a dynamic sense of things around and also their own selves
(Christopher Bigsby, 4). The narratives of loss and erasure of the African
Americans have been subjected to ignorance and indifference and playwrights
like Nottage and Parks have utilized theatre to evoke a difference in the
perceptions of the viewers; to contrast the divergence with linearity
stipulated traditionally by those in power. The black consciousness, therefore,
grew fragmented by the impressive white modernity and perplexing black
tradition. The duality could be observed at the level of cultural productions
as well as the approach that the representations adopted. ‘The double
consciousness’ which Du Bois described as the internal conflict experienced by
the population living under suppressed condition was a lived reality and its
reverberations in terms of current socio-cultural plight of the lot can be felt
even today.
The idea of the existence of the alternate
versions of the tales besides what mainstream channelizes has been taken upon
as the brooding ground for contemporary African American women playwrights who
attempt to demystify the profane film of stigma and stereotypes associated with
black culture and identity as it has eclipsed the very essence of African
Americanness.
Works Cited
Bigsby, Christopher. “Lynn Nottage.” Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Cambridge University Press,2017.
Geis, Deborah R. Suzan-Lori Parks. University of Michigan Press. Michigan, 2008.
Madhubati, Haki R. Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? The Afrikan American Family in Transition. Third World Press, 1990.
Mobley, Jennifer-Scott. “Melodrama, Sensation, and Activism in Ruined”.A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage, edited by Jocelyn L. Buckner. Routledge, 2016.
Nottage, Lynn. Ruined- A Play. Theatre Communications Group, 2010.
Parks, Suzan-Lori. Topdog/UnderDog. Theatre Communications Group, 2010.
-----. The America Play and Other Works. Theatre Communications Group, 1995.
Rasberry, Vaughan. Race and Totalitarian Century: Geopolitics in the Black Literary Imagination. Harvard University Press, 2016.
White, Walter. A Rising Wind, Doubleday Press, 1945.