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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 Follow this and additional works at: https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/lajur 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. Liberated Arts is an open access journal, which means that its content is freely available without charge to readers and their institutions. All content published by Liberated Arts is licensed under the Creative Commons License, Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Readers are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without seeking prior permission from Liberated Arts or the authors. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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 long- standing 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. 1 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. 2 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.
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