A Transmogrifying Discourse of Sexual Violence: Resisting, Redressing and Re-Writing

A Transmogrifying Discourse of Sexual Violence: Resisting, Redressing and Re-writing Racial Scripts in Contemporary African American Women's Theatre by Amna Haider A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfilment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Language and Literature Waterloo, Ontario, Canada © Amna Haider 2019 Examining Committee Membership The following served on the Examining Committee for this thesis. The decision of the Examining Committee is by majority vote. External Examiner Dr. E. Patrick Johnson Professor Co-Supervisor(s) Dr. Frances Condon Associate Professor Co-Supervisor(s) Dr. Vershawn A. Young Professor Internal-external Member Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae Assistant Professor Internal Members Dr. Jennifer Harris Associate Professor Internal Members Dr. Andrew McMurry Associate Professor ii Author's Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. iii Abstract This dissertation examines contemporary African American women's theatre that addresses the absented and erased reality of black women as victims of sexual violence. This thesis investigates how contemporary African American Theatre and performance unfolds two realities of rape: one reality is of the erased victims, and the second of the perpetrators of sexual violence. Working at the intersections of gender and black feminist studies, critical race theory and performance studies this dissertation studies how the African American creative impulses are re-writing rape narratives by deconstructing debilitating racist myths and stereotypes. It seeks to expand limited definitions of rape in legal discourses, pointing out limitations of concepts like date rape and issues of consent, but also looks at forms of sexual violation that simply do not usually register within legal parameters like lesbian rape, rape through verbal sexual harassment, and medical rape. Furthermore, this project engages with racist stereotypes that either nullify black women's experiential realities of sexual violence or demonize black men. One of the main objectives of this dissertation is to examine the perpetrators of violence as well as the victims through dramatic and performative engagements with sexual violence. Therefore, this thesis examines the rapist, be it a man, a lesbian, a mother, or an adolescent youth as part of African American contemporary Theatre's engagement with the narratives of rape. This equalizing representation of sexual violence as an act not just done to black women, but is done by men and women to black women makes African American Theatre and performance redress the imbalance wherein black women as victims of sexual violence bore the burden of the violence committed against them alone. This impulse to redress the imbalance raises many thorny issues of black manhood, black motherhood, and the role of black community that these playwrights fiercely bring into conversation, not to repeat historical racist narratives this dissertation iv contends, but to re-evaluate the roles and responsibilities of black people, and what it means to be black in the face of sexual violence. The first section of this dissertation examines silence around the reality of rape of black women. Beginning with Robbie McCauley's Sally's Rape I look at the relevance of the slave rape history for contemporary audiences. Additionally, Sally's Rape looks at the burial of rape histories as national crypts that helps maintain myths regarding rape and black sexuality. This past assessment of rape impacts understandings of the present rapes of black women as elucidated in another play -- through Misty DeBerry's Milkweed. What does it mean to break the silence around sexual violence for the victim? This question is addressed by examining Aishah Rahman's play Only in America: a play that was inspired by the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Senate Hearings based on Professor Hill's sexual harassment allegations against USA Supreme Court Justice Thomas in 1991, when he was being vetted for the job by the USA Senate. The next section reveals how Suzan-Lori Parks' plays and Aishah Rahman engage with the politics of the gaze and the process of absenting the victim. This murderous gaze that looks at and looks through black women is examined first through hypervisibility of Venus Hottentot in Venus and Professor Hill, and then through the invisibility of Hester La Negrita in In the Blood to show how black women the processes through which victims of sexual violence and violations are made to disappear, and with their disappearance goes the understanding and possible retribution for the sexual violence committed against them. Furthermore, this chapter also examines how black women experience rape through the sexually invasive scientific and medical violations of their bodies. The last chapter examines black children and young adults caught in vicious cycles of intergenerational violence, how they experience or perpetrate rape, furthering cycles of violence v through the works of Dael Orladersmith and Kia Corthron. Two important aspect analysed here is first, the hidden wound of internalised racism and its manifestation through rape, and second an examination of violence by victims of rape. vi Acknowledgements I would like to extend my gratitude to all members of the Department of English at the University of Waterloo for helping me in so many uncountable ways till I reached this final stage of my dissertation. In particular, I am indebted to the guidance, patience, and encouragement of my supervisors, Prof. Frances Condon and Prof. Vershawn A. Young, who have had a profound effect on my thinking and research. I also want to thank my Research committee members, Prof. Jennifer Harris for her insightful advise, and Prof. Andrew McMurry for guiding me in my final stages of revision. I also want to thank my examiners, Prof. Johnson and Prof. Keleta-Mae for your thoughtful questions and for showing such faith in my research. Lastly, I want to thank my family, in particular my aunt Naureen Manzoor, my uncle Manzoor Pervez and my sister Sana Haider for all their moral and emotional support in Canada while I completed my studies at University of Waterloo. vii Dedication I dedicate this work to my parents, Nasir Humayun Haider and Yasmin Nasir. You are missed more every day. I hope you are proud of me. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Understanding African American Women's Rape Realities 1 Unlocking the Crypt and Breaking the Silence: Silent and Silenced Histories of Rape 47 Process of Ghosting as Manifestation of Rape Act 105 Child Abuse and Adolescent Sexual Violence Begets Violence: Cycles of Intergenerational Violence and Manifestations of Internalised Racism 167 Conclusion 228 Bibliography 234 ix Chapter 1, Introduction: Understanding African American Women's Rape Realities you ain't nothing but a black woman! who told you anybody wanted to hear from you? this aint the 60s you know....and you know what happens when a black woman opens her mouth to say anything other than do it to me! hattie gosset, "Who told you anybody wants to hear from you?"1 black women are the beached whales of the sexual universe, unvoiced, misseen, not doing, awaiting their verb. Hortense Spillers, "Interstices: A Small Drama of Words"2 Playwright, poet, and editor, hattie gosset, writes of her fear and her anxiety that as a black woman what she has to say is of no value, unless she issues a sexual invitation: "do it to me!" (gosset 175) As the stereotypes about black women as hypersexual persist so does the lack of value that underlie black women's racial experiences as has been identified and articulated by gosset. gosset's concerns are especially relevant when the erroneous perceptions of black women's perpetual sexual availability render them unseen and unheard as victims of sexual violence. Black women's erased reality in rape narratives is exemplified in the black history of sexual violence from slavery through Jim Crow era to the present. This dissertation argues that late twentieth century and contemporary African American women's plays that focus on sexual violence formulate a resistance narrative to the racist sociological, historical, legal, and medical discourses wherein black women as victims of rape disappear. The eight contemporary plays I analyse -- plays by Robbie McCauley, Misty DeBerry, Aishah Rahman, Suzan-Lori Parks, Dael Orlandersmith, and Kia Corthron -- function as counter stories that write into being black women as legitimate victims of sexual violence. Thus, these plays are a reclamation endeavor by black women playwrights, on behalf of black women, of their right to articulate and have value attached to what they say about their experiences of sexual violence and sexual trauma. For these ____________________ 1 gossit, hattie. "Who told you anybody wants to hear from you? you ain't nothing but a black woman!". This Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. edited by Cherrίe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. p. 175. 2Spillers, Hortense. "Interstices: A Small Drama of Words". The Routledge Language and Cultural Theory Reader. edited by Lucy Burke, Tom Crowley and Alan Girvin, p. 153. 1 playwrights the persistence of the outright denial, or the minimization of sexual violence, because the survivor is "nothing but a black woman", is unacceptable (gosset 175). Instead, it is precisely because these are black women's experiences of survivorship of sexual violence that they are valued and validated in these dramatized resistance narratives. This study investigates how contemporary African American dramatists and performers work to expose how black women's bodies have been imprinted by the history of slavery and racism in America. Black women, both individually and collectively, have been written into racialized and racist frameworks perpetuated by and within the dominant western discourses.

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