Passed Over: The Tragic Mulatta and (Dis)Integration of Identity in Adrienne Kennedy's Plays

Brown, Erella

doi:10.2307/2903258

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 11 publications

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“…More recent Black criticism of Kennedy's work recognizes that while her plays were once controversial, in retrospect, they launch a compelling critique of racial assimilation, which was ahead of its time (Brown, 2001;hooks, 1992). Historically, assimilation in America has been forged through the ideology of racial difference, that is through the essential binary identities of pure, White American and foreign, non-White other.…”

Section: Politics Poetics and Critical Receptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fractured Identity and Agency and the Plays of Adrienne Kennedy

Boucher¹

2006

Feminist Review

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This paper examines the plays of African-American playwright Adrienne Kennedy, Funnyhouse of a Negro (1962) and The Owl Answers (1963), which remain important for their engagement with notions of African-American identity, resistance and agency through their attention to mixed race female characters or mulattos who experience bodily and psychological traumas that demonstrate the abuse of the colonized on a deeply visceral level. Kennedy's plays have remained controversial because of their failure to comply with the nationalistic orientation of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) of 1960s America. I aim to examine these plays through a framework of postcolonial-feminist performance analysis that finds its way back to histories of colonization and slavery, enabling through such returns, a compelling critique of the manoeuvrings of racial hierarchies and power imbalances. As well, I argue that Kennedy's protagonists are de-essentialized fractured beings who fail to embody either White superiority or Black nationalist pride, as they oscillate between two polarities. Such failure (on the part of Kennedy's mulattos) allows for a strategic de-essentialization of identity that interrogates fixed categorization. As well, through a form that is fluid, fragmented and blurs the distinctions among history, memory, space and time, her works impart political agency to the characters and enable an empowered sense of the ‘self-in-process.’

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Section: Politics Poetics and Critical Receptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fractured Identity and Agency and the Plays of Adrienne Kennedy

Boucher¹

2006

Feminist Review

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The Alienated Clara: Intersectionality Perspectives in Adrienne Kennedy’s The Owl Answers

Jabboury

Hashim

Satkunananthan

2017

AKAD

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Intersectional Edges in Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro and The Owl Answers

Göksu,

Aras

2023

Cankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

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This article aims to explore intersectional boundaries in the construction of formations through the analysis of Adrienne Kennedy’s plays, Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) and The Owl Answers (1965) Intersectionality challenges the axes of power by interrogating the experiences of the marginal voices who are exposed to simultaneous and interactive oppression. Positions of the disadvantaged identities predetermined through cultural construction in these plays reveal the discrimination debates at a junction where identity crisis points out what it means to be both black and woman, and the denial of intersections to keep the differences alive. The juxtaposition of intersectional voices against privileged ones provides a lens through which one can understand the systematic nature of oppression and inequality. One’s being aware of her/his own position means realizing how confronted identities are constructed and positioned. Thus, trying to struggle against domination and invisibility in such a construct draws a road map of a journey to self-definition and required consciousness to resist. Within the framework of intersectionality, the present study offers a focus on black females’ experience and social and political consequences of a culturally adapted construction through race, gender, sex, and class.

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Passed Over: The Tragic Mulatta and (Dis)Integration of Identity in Adrienne Kennedy's Plays

Cited by 3 publications

References 11 publications

Fractured Identity and Agency and the Plays of Adrienne Kennedy

Fractured Identity and Agency and the Plays of Adrienne Kennedy

The Alienated Clara: Intersectionality Perspectives in Adrienne Kennedy’s The Owl Answers

Intersectional Edges in Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro and The Owl Answers

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