The Violence of Duality in Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro

Abstract

Adrienne Kennedy’s psychodrama Funnyhouse of a Negro personifies in her protagonist, Sarah, the internalized racism and mental deterioration that a binary paradigm foments. Kennedy also develops the schizoid consciousness of Sarah to accentuate Sarah’s hybridized and traumatized identity as an African American woman. Kennedy’s play was controversial during the Black Arts Movement, as she refrained from endorsing black nationalist groups like Black Power, constructing instead a nightmare world in which race is the singular element in defining self-worth. In her dramatized indictment of both white supremacy and identity politics, American culture’s pathologized fascination with pigmentation drives the protagonist to solipsistic isolation, and ultimately, to suicide. Kennedy, through the disturbed cast of Sarah’s mind, portrays a world in which race obsession triumphs over any sense of basic humanity. The play urges the audience to accept the absurdity of a dichotomized vision of the world, to recognize the spectral nature of reality, and to transcend the devastation imposed by polarizing rhetoric.