Liberated Arts: a Journal for Undergraduate Research

Liberated Arts: A Journal for Undergraduate Research

Volume 6, Issue 1 Article 4

2019

The Political and Psychological Dramatization of Internalized and Externalized Violence in Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain and Edward Bond’s Lear Verity Mckeown St. Andrews University

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Recommended Citation Mckeown, Verity (2019) “The Political and Psychological Dramatization of Internalized and Externalized Violence in Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain and Edward Bond’s Lear,” Liberated Arts: a journal for undergraduate research: Vol. 6: Iss. 1, Article 4.

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The Political and Psychological Dramatization of Internalized and Externalized Violence in Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain and Edward Bond’s Lear Verity Mckeown, St. Andrews University

Abstract: This essay asserts that Lear and Dream on Monkey Mountain dramatize violence within a political and psychological framework designed to execute a distinctly contextually informed ideological purpose. I assert that the primary means through which they execute this function is through exploration of how violence may transcend physical materiality and take epistemic form. Overall, I conclude that both plays are united in their desire to illuminate how the theatrical and historical context of a performance informs the politicisation of violence.

Keywords: violence; oppression; Colonialism; Fanon; psychology; staging

This essay will explore how Lear (1971)1 and Dream on Monkey Mountain (1970)2 dramatize violence within an ideological and psychological framework designed to execute a twofold political purpose: first, to represent that which colonialism has rendered invisible; and, second, to use that representation to shock the audience into political consciousness. Lear and Dream both engage with the rhetorical discourse on the status of violence as a necessary and valid political expression. Dream on Monkey Mountain highlights how violence may be dramatized to take epistemic, rather than physical form, due to the longstanding psychological impact of colonialism. Moreover, Bond asserts that Lear evidences how violence on stage has the potential to shock the audience into enhanced self-awareness, thus, by extension, political consciousness. Overall, both Lear and Dream utilise their respective literary, theatrical and historical contexts to capitalize and concretize violence as a theatrical device, moving beyond the physicality of the violent act itself, forming part of a wider dramaturgical strategy.

The two works address the possibility of utilising violence in times of necessity as a political tool. As Kelly Baker Josephs establishes, with its lack of “narrative linearity” and its “contradictory images and characters” the rhetoric in Dream is highly ambiguous.3 On one hand, it may be argued Dream presents violence as an emancipatory political

1 All page references to Lear in this essay are taken from Edward Bond and Patricia Hern, Lear (London: Methuen Drama, 2009). 2 All page references to Dream on Monkey Mountain in this essay are taken from Derek Walcott, Dream on Monkey Mountain (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giraux, 2003). 3 Kelly Baker Josephs, "Dreams, Delirium, And Decolonization in Derek Walcott's Dream on Monkey Mountain," Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal Of Criticism 14, no. 2 (2010): 12, doi:10.1215/07990537-2010-002.

force confronting oppression. For example, the corporal calls for violence to murder the white woman who appears in Makak’s dreams because “she is the colour of law, religion, paper, art and if you want peace, if you want to discover the beautiful depth of your blackness, nigger, chop off her head!.”

Dwaipayan Mirta argues that throughout Dream Walcott is advocating for “violence to uproot the colonial regime and unify the oppressed people.”4 This echoes revolutionary Frantz Fanon’s assertion that “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.”5 Fanon endorsed the potential for violence to be liberatory and cathartic in its ability to free the colonial subject from his “despair and inaction” to restore his “self-respect.”6 On the other hand, it may be argued that Walcott is warning against utilising violent tactics to achieve emancipation, given that he “depends mainly on the use of metaphor to illustrate the key concepts” of Dream.7 The prologue states, “reversed the moon becomes the sun,” a statement which may be understood as a metaphor symbolising Walcott’s call for the deconstruction of binaries based on race relations, such as the assumption that there exists an inherent opposition between ‘white’ and ‘black’. In this understanding, the play may act as a cautionary metaphor warning against utilising physical violence in response to colonialism.

Conversely, in Lear violence is overwhelmingly presented as an oppressive and cyclical negative force: for example, Bodice’s argument that the Duke of North and the Duke of Cornwall “threatened” Lear because it was a “political necessity” but “now that’s all in the past!” because they have a new alliance. Likewise, Cordelia later reasons that “once we have power these things [violent tactics] won’t be necessary.” The use of the words “necessary” and “necessity” in both instances in Lear emphasises the play’s assertion that the characters believe in the inescapability of utilising violent tactics to reach their political ends. In illuminating this, Richard Scharine argues that Bond dramatizes violence to “attack both existing institutions and revered traditions,” which contributes to the continuation of these endless cycles of violence. 8 The cyclical nature of violence is illuminated also by Walcott, who addresses how colonisation creates a culture of inescapable ideological and physical violence that is difficult to reconcile peacefully.

4 Dwaipayan Mitra, "Postcolonial Identity Crisis in Derek Walcott’s "Dream on Monkey Mountain,"" International Journal Of English Language, Literature And Translation Studies 2, no. 3 (2015): 56. 5 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of The Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2002): 35. 6 Fanon, The Wretched of The Earth: 74. 7 Scott Crossley, "Metaphors and the Reclamation of Blackness in Derek Walcott's "Dream on Monkey Mountain,"" Journal Of Caribbean Literatures 7, no. 1 (2011): 15, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41939264. 8 Richard G Scharine, The Plays of Edward Bond (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1976): 23.

The dramatization of violence in Dream deconstructs the audience’s conception of the dichotomy dividing epistemic and physical violence. Black American critic Larry Neal describes the Black revolution as a mental rather than physical “internal violence” that involves “the destruction of a weak spiritual self for a more perfect self.”9 In the context of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s, Neal asserts that “Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept” and an exploration of “violence or self-assertion on the part of the enslaved’.10 This links contextually Walcott’s work to the Black Arts Movement, which includes such texts as Amiri Baraka’s play The Slave, in which the character Clay “is reincarnated as the revolutionary confronting problems inherited from his contact with white culture.”11 It may be argued Walcott here responds to the themes raised by other theatre of the Black Arts Movement. For example, Makak confesses that he feels as though he has been “washed from shore to shore, as a tree in the ocean” “but now, God, they have found ground.” The resolution to the play demonstrates the development of Makak’s black revolutionary consciousness and the spiritual reconciliation associated with this psychological growth. However, Walcott acknowledges the longstanding psychological influence of epistemic violence on Makak’s subconscious. Laura Donaldson identifies epistemic violence as “one of colonialism's most insidious yet predictable effects: violating the most fundamental way that a person or people know themselves,” which resonates after geographical land decolonization.12 Literary critic Ramaiah views Dream as a “magnificent cautionary allegorization of the native’s revenge against the ‘epistemic violence’ of imperialism.”13 Epistemic violence is highlighted in Scene Three Act Two of Dream as Basil reads a list of the accused to Makak, all white figures from history and contemporary society including “Abraham Lincoln, Alexander of Macedon, Shakespeare.” Their being ‘white’ is given as the reason to “banish them from the archives” of Makak’s dreamed society. Walcott uses allegorical inversion to draw the audience’s attention to the historical exclusion of non-White voices from disciplines such as politics and literature. By drawing attention to this injustice, Walcott explores the potential for violence, brutality and cruelty to move beyond physical dramatization of violence on stage or in reality. This notion is felt throughout postcolonial theory, which draws attention to the violently long-lasting effects of imperialism on the colonised. Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo linguistically appropriates the syntax of military violence in his theory of the ‘cultural bomb’ which argues that colonisers place metaphorical bombs in the minds of the colonised which “annihilate a people’s belief in their names […] and ultimately in

9 Cited in Lloyd W Brown, "Dreamers And Slaves: The Ethos Of Revolution In Walcott And Leroi Jones", Caribbean Quarterly 17, no. 3-4 (1971): 40. 10 Larry Neal, "The Black Arts Movement," The Drama Review: TDR 12, no. 4 (1968): 28, doi:10.2307/1144377: 29. 11 Ibid 36 12 Pui-lan Kwok and Laura E Donaldson, Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse (New York: Routledge, 2001): 51. 13 K Venkata Reddy and P Bayapa Reddy, Aspects of Contemporary World Literature (New Delhi: Atlantic, 2008): 237.

themselves.”14 Therefore, overall it is possible to read Dream as a purposefully political exploration of how colonial violence may take both physical and epistemic form. This sentiment is mirrored by Fanon who argued “it is not necessary to be wounded by a bullet in order to suffer from the fact of a war in body as well as in mind.”15

Moreover, Bond asserts that in Lear the dramatization of physical violence on stage may potentially trigger an emotive response that engages audiences with the political message. Lear explores how state-sanctioned violence assists the rise of totalitarian power. For example, the removal of Warrington’s tongue is to Bodice a necessity as she confesses in an aside, “I couldn’t risk him talking about my letter. I had his tongue cut out.” Likewise, in Act Two the fourth prisoner “(Removes one of Lear’s eyes)” then “(He removes Lear’s other eye)” with a “scientific device.’” Spencer notes this “sequence of unremitting and orgiastic violence towards Warrington is a potent and deeply disturbing example of what Bond referred to in this period as ‘aggro- effects.’”16 The ‘aggro-effect’ is Bond’s own term to describe the dramatization of extreme violence which is “designed to commit an audience emotionally and thus to jolt it into questioning the realities which it might normally accept uncritically.”17 For example, the Royal Court’s production of Lear utilised authentic fire arms. Bond notes that using such anachronisms was not a “frivolous touch” but rather asserts the “desperate fact” of Lear’s political resonance.18 The excessive use of violence throughout Lear may be understood as a purposeful variety of shock therapy, jolting the audience into critical engagement with the onstage action. Michael Mangan argues Bond is “clearly indebted to Artaud’s theatre of cruelty” in his use of aggro-effects. The connection between Bond’s work and Antonin Artaud’s ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ is visible in Jacques Derrida’s essay “The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation,” in which he identifies the way Artaud appreciated “the act of political revolution” to be “theatrical.”19 In his book The Theater and Its Double Artaud argues that the world has become ravaged by “disorder, famine, blood, war, and epidemics” and calls for the reader to respond to the fact that:

Everything that used to sustain our lives no longer does so, that we are all mad, desperate, and sick. And I call for us to react. This idea of a detached art, of poetry as a charm which exists

14 Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind (Oxford: Currey, 2011): 3. 15 Fanon, The Wretched of The Earth: 290. 16 Peter Billingham, Edward Bond: A Critical Study, 1st ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013): 44. 17 Michael Mangan, Edward Bond (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1998): 22. 18 Gregory Dark, "Production Casebook No. 5: Edward Bond's Lear at The Royal Court", Theatre Quarterly 2, no. 5 (1972): 25. 19 Jacques Derrida, "The Theater Of Cruelty and the Closure Of Representation", Theater 9, no. 3 (1978): 14.

only to distract our leisure, is a decadent idea and an unmistakable symptom of our power to castrate.”20

Here Artaud calls for theatre that responds to the violent political environment of the 20th century through actively engaging with the issues of the political climate. Overall, Bond’s insistence on the reality of the violence dramatized in Lear reflects his commitment to theatre which politically engages the audience, motivating them to critically reflect on their own behaviour. This places Bond’s work in a wider theatrical context, one which is conscious of theatre’s potential to perform an ideological function.

Finally, Lear and Dream utilize their respective theatrical, literary and historical contexts to put into effect the dramatization of violence as a political tool. For example, in the prologue of Dream monkey mountain is described as “volcanic,” linking it to the real landscape of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.21 The Oxford English dictionary defines ‘volcanic’ as both a word with geographical meaning but also one that is able take on the definition of “(a feeling or emotion) bursting out or liable to burst out violently.”22 Siga Fatima Jange et al. notes that for African postcolonial writers the “metaphors of fire, flame, and volcano express the rage of the people.”23 The metaphor of the volcano therefore may be understood to symbolise a natural, unpredictable sleeping violence which will one day inevitably erupt. For Makak, arguably this ‘eruption’ is internal; as Robert Hamner notes, “Makak returns to his mountain retreat a new man because of his increased insight.”24 This links to Bond’s theory of ‘Rational Theatre’ that calls for the act of creating “a new existence for ourselves by breaking free of our cage.”25 Bond views his own work to be part of Rational Theatre because of his belief that “theatre, when it's doing what it was created to do, demonstrates order in the chaos, the ideal in the ordinary, history in the present, the rational in the seemingly irrational.”26 Daniel Jones argues that Rational Theatre does however seek to illuminate that “the present social order is its own form of violence, and that man can

20 Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double (New York: Grove Press, 2004): 80 and 77 respectively. 21 Casey D Allen, Landscapes and Landforms of the Lesser Antilles (Cham: Springer, 2017): 205. 22 "Volcanic | Definition of Volcanic In English by Oxford Dictionaries", Oxford Dictionaries | English, 2018, https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/volcanic. 23 Siga Fatima Jagne and Pushpa Naidu Parekh, Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio- Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012): 388. 24 Robert D Hamner, Critical Perspectives on Derek Walcott (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1993): 89. 25 Annamma George, "Literary Subversion: A Study of Modern Adaptations of Shakespeare’s Tragedies by Edward Bond, Charles Marowitz and Tom Stoppard" (St. Thomas College, Thrissur, University of Calicut, 2012): 43. 26 “The Rational Theatre” in Edward Bond, Bond Plays: 2: Lear; The Sea; Narrow Road To The Deep North; Black Mass; Passion (London: Methuen Drama, 1989). p.xiv.

change his society.”27 Moreover, Lear utilises the representation of violence in Shakespeare’s King Lear in a manner which moves from the metaphoric to the literal, concretizing the theatrical motifs of Shakespeare’s King Lear. For example, Spencer notes “King Lear’s desire to anatomize the soul of Regan becomes an actual autopsy” in Lear.28 This recasts King Lear onto the plane of modern warfare, which Bond argues is ‘the whole point about the violence in the play” because it is not ‘the act of violence that was important but rather the context it was placed into” and ‘the sort of society which the violence” indicates.29 Overall, Dream and Lear utilise their respective contexts to actualize the political and cultural potential of violence.

In conclusion, this essay has examined how Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain and Bond’s Lear use theatre to engage with the psychology and physicality of political violence. Both plays examine the rhetoric surrounding the utilisation of violence, as an emancipatory and destructive, necessity to achieve change. Dream challenges the notion that violence may be only exercised physically, highlighting that epistemic violence is continually inflicted on colonial subjects. Moreover, Bond uses the violence in Lear to shock the audience and gain their attention, hoping to draw awareness to the reality of the violence depicted onstage. Overall, both plays interact with their respective theatrical and historical contexts to concretize and solidify their dramatization of violence, grounding it in a modern context with unavoidable allusive resonance.

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VERITY MCKEOWN St. Andrews University, Scotland MA (Hons) English and Social Anthropology