Archeology of Racism in Suzan Lori Parks’s Venus | ||
| Anbar University Journal of Languages & Literature | ||
| Article 25, Volume 14, Issue 4, December 2022, Pages 641-658 PDF (461.68 K) | ||
| Document Type: Research Paper | ||
| DOI: 10.37654/aujll.2022.179855 | ||
| Author | ||
| . Elaff Ganim Salih | ||
| English Department College of Education for Women, University of Anbar | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Racism is still an ongoing critical concern governing the relationship between the white and black people in the history of English Literature. It is a reflection for the ethnic and the color conflicts between these two entities of the American society. Throughout time, the differences in race and skin color regulate the relationships between them. Many writers talked about the different forms of racism; physical and verbal violence, transgression, injustice, slavery ...etc. One of them is Suzan Lorie Parks who approaches the problem of race in her plays. Past studies examined the racist attitudes in Parks’s plays. However, this article examines the racist manipulation of black woman’s body and the way of resisting this racist behavior in Venus (1996). Methodologically, the research examines the performative dimension of Parks’s archeological endeavor to locate racism in her play. She uses digging in history as her main archeological and dramatic tool in revealing the unrecorded and forgotten parts of racist history. Therefore, the study concludes that through highlighting the exploitation of black women bodies, Parks succeeds in rehistorisizing the African American history by bringing unremembered and unrecorded characters into the stage. Thus, she challenges the oversimplified and binary discourse of racism in her Venus. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Racism; Susan Lori Parks; Venus; black woman; slavery | ||
| References | ||
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