Redefining political theatre: masochism and the problem of identity

TL;DRAbstract

This dissertation proposes that the psychoanalytic concept of masochism is indispensable in interpreting race and gender politics in contemporary American theatre by women of color. The plays I examine -- Suzan-Lori Parks's Venus, Adrienne Kennedy's The Ohio State Murders and Alice Tuan's Hit -- use race and gender to expose the manner in which the democratic principles of modernity are not fulfilled, despite the appearance of equality. They do this, paradoxically, by staging the ways in which social factors might produce political conformity rather than defiance. Masochism, I argue, offers a compelling critical lens into the failures of liberal democracy as experienced by women of color. These failures surface as crises in the idealized concept of the autonomous, free-willing subject, a concept on which the democratic principles are based. Unlike much political theatre, the plays in this study do not represent efforts to achieve such an idealized subject position. Instead they depict

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