|
|
Article: Addicted to race: performativity, agency, and Cesaire's 'A Tempest.' (Aime Cesaire)
- Article from:
- College Literature
- Article date:
- March 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 West Chester University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
A Profound sense of spectacle pervades the dramatic writings of Aime Cesaire. Unabashedly political in their critique of simplistic, accepted readings of racial and national identity, these plays do not preach to the spectator, nor do they purport to mirror a reality through the conventions of mimetic theater. A lucid and frequently ironic deployment of theatricality lends them a complexity that resists a realist mise-en-scene, and that leads theater practitioners and spectators alike to ponder the implications of the foregrounded performance of identity. In both the characters represented and the gesture of their representation, Cesaire questions complex and unstable racial ...