The Watched without Organs: A Deleuzean Reading of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus
محورهای موضوعی : Journal of Teaching English Language Studies
Sara Faryam Rad
1
,
Hassan Shahabi
2
,
Shahram Raeisi Sistani
3
1 - Ph.D. student, Department of Humanities, College of English Language and Literature, Kerman Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kerman, Iran.
2 - Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities, College of English Language and Literature, Kerman Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kerman, Iran.
3 - Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman, Iran.
کلید واژه: Deleuzean BwO, Love, Suzan-Lori Parks, Venus ,
چکیده مقاله :
Suzan-Lori Parks, as a female black playwright, in her postmodern drama, Venus, has portrayed the condition of living of a black South African girl, subjugated under the hegemonic power of dominant colonizers. Saartje Bartmann, later renamed as Venus Hottentot, is seduced and then exploited by the colonizing power, both men and women. In the process of being sent from Africa to Europe, she is being watched, performing ritual dance and then, scrutinized by the colonizers. In this regard, the present study aims to read Venus by borrowing a different perspective from Deleuzean terminology to clarify and open up the less-discussed and investigated aspects of Parks’s drama to conclude that Venus’s slavery narrative, resembling a Deleuzean Watched without Organs, while entails a process of becoming different and against the dominant power, a schizoid person. It can be inferred as a form of Parksean resistance against the dominant metanarratives and creating her own mini-narrative.
Suzan-Lori Parks, as a female black playwright, in her postmodern drama, Venus, has portrayed the condition of living of a black South African girl, subjugated under the hegemonic power of dominant colonizers. Saartje Bartmann, later renamed as Venus Hottentot, is seduced and then exploited by the colonizing power, both men and women. In the process of being sent from Africa to Europe, she is being watched, performing ritual dance and then, scrutinized by the colonizers. In this regard, the present study aims to read Venus by borrowing a different perspective from Deleuzean terminology to clarify and open up the less-discussed and investigated aspects of Parks’s drama to conclude that Venus’s slavery narrative, resembling a Deleuzean Watched without Organs, while entails a process of becoming different and against the dominant power, a schizoid person. It can be inferred as a form of Parksean resistance against the dominant metanarratives and creating her own mini-narrative.
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Parks, Suzan-Lori. “From the Elements of Style.” In The America Play and Other Works. New York: Theatre Communications Group. 1995. 6-18.
---. Venus. New York: Theatre Communications Group. 1997
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