Dedoxification of White Mythology: A Deleuzo-Baroquean Reading of Suzan-Lori Parks' The Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom

Subject Areas : Comparative Literature Studies

Sara Faryam Rad ¹ ( PhD candidate, Islamic Azad University, Kerman Branch )
Hassan Shahabi ² ( Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities, College of English Language and Literature, Kerman Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kerman, Iran. (Corresponding author) )
Shahram Raeisi Sistani ³ ( Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman, Iran. )

Received: 2023-10-20 Accepted : 2024-03-07 Published : 2024-06-04

Keywords: Becoming, Deleuzo-Baroquean, Dedoxification, Neo-baroque, Suzan-Lori Parks,

Abstract :

This article attempts to investigate the first major dramatic work of Suzan-Lori Parks from a new angle in suggesting the writer, like the Persian Shahrzad story-teller with interwoven stories/plays, narrates, through a Parksian labyrinthine folding structure, the lost history of African subordinated and discarded by History. Having a Deleuzo-baroquean perspective, this study explores the imperceptible or less-known aspects of her drama that have been muted throughout the White mythological historicism. She portrays, on her neo-baroquean canvas, an amalgamation of myth, music, and performance, while her figures, dis-figured by the dominant discourse, become the schizophrenic bodies that subvert the ruling system in a rhizomatic manner. Moreover, her polyphonic lines of flight in the form of Jazz syncopation, contrapuntally, recite the saga of African-American oppressions. In the end, it is concluded that Parks, as a female African-American playwright, has distinguished her dramatic works from her contemporaneous by designating the Deleuzo-baroquean plateau in her first play, a tool for subverting and undermining the dominant discourse, in the trajectory of Shahrzad's flight to save her dramatic life.

References:

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