The Traumatized/traumatizing Subject In Anna Deavere Smith

300 Pages·2015·2.19 MB·English

Wayne State University
Wayne State University Dissertations
1-1-2013
The Traumatized/traumatizing Subject In Anna
Deavere Smith, Suzan-Lori Parks, And August
Wilson
Christopher J. Giroux
Wayne State University,
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Giroux, Christopher J., "The Traumatized/traumatizing Subject In Anna Deavere Smith, Suzan-Lori Parks, And August Wilson"
(2013).Wayne State University Dissertations.Paper 884.
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THE TRAUMATIZED/TRAUMATIZING SUBJECT IN ANNA DEAVERE
SMITH, SUZAN-LORI PARKS, AND AUGUST WILSON

by
CHRISTOPHER J. GIROUX
DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Graduate School
of Wayne State University,
Detroit, Michigan
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
2014
MAJOR: ENGLISH
Approved by:

Advisor Date
© COPYRIGHT BY
CHRISTOPHER J. GIROUX
2014
All Rights Reserved
DEDICATION

for Sally and Grace
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks are due to the following for their ongoing support, advice, and
encouragement: the members of my committee, Lisa Ze Winters, Anca Vlasopolos,
Sarika Chandra, and Kidada Williams, without whom none of this would have been
possible; the directors and staff of the Graduate Program in English at Wayne State
University: Ken Jackson, Jeff Pruchnic, Ross Pudaloff, Michael Scrivener, Myrtle
Hamilton, and Kay Stone; Ambika Mathur and Katrina Newsom of Wayne State’s
Graduate School, as well as the Graduate School itself for financial support; members of
the faculty of the English Department at Wayne State University who have inspired me
over several decades, nurtured my love of English, and showed me what good teaching
looks like, particularly those who influenced and supported my graduate work: Ellen
Barton, Sarika Chandra, Yates Hafner, Margaret Jordan, the late Terry King, Janet
Langlois, Michael Scrivener, Anca Vlasopolos, and Lisa Ze Winters; my “Tri-Cities”
system of support, particularly Don Bachand, Peter Barry, Diane Boehm, Ann García and
Jim Geistman, Eric Gardner, Lynne Graft, Mary Harmon, Phyllis Hastings, Pat Latty,
Sharon Opheim, Helen Raica-Klotz, Elizabeth Rich, Bob and Ruth Sawyers, Melissa
Seitz, Paul and Melissa Teed, and the late Les Whittaker; my parents, Jim and Sheila; my
mother-in-law, the late Alice Teisman; my siblings and “siblings”: Steve and Paula, Jen
and Dennis, Tim and Dawn, and Sue and Juan; my wonderful wife, Sally, and beautiful
daughter, Grace.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication _____________________________________________________________ii
Acknowledgments ______________________________________________________ iii
Chapter 1 “Trauma and Drama—A Rationale”_________________________________ 1
Chapter 2 “Trauma, Twilight, and Fires in the Mirror: Negotiating the Literature of
Dispossession with Anna Deavere Smith”__________________________ 40

Mirroring Society, Mirroring Identity: Smith’s Means and Methods _________ 44
Revisiting the Past________________________________________________ 52
Disconnection and Dispossession, Textual Organization, and the Subversion of
Time___________________________________________________________ 55
Moving Outward: Rodney King and Beyond ___________________________ 62
Similarity through Difference, Mimesis through the Antimimetic ___________ 73
The Other, the Audience, and Fostering Truth __________________________ 82
Fragments of/Fragmenting the Text___________________________________ 88
Minding the Gap _________________________________________________ 96
Invoking Trauma, Invoking Diaspora ________________________________ 101
Chapter 3 “Suzan-Lori Parks, the Failure to Heal, and the Traumatization of
Viewership” ________________________________________________ 121

Toppling the Topdog _____________________________________________ 126
Venus: A Touch of Diaspora_______________________________________ 133
The America Play—A Play on America and the Knowing of the Traumatic
Past___________________________________________________________ 144
Trauma, Repetition, Revision, and History ___________________________ 147
iv
Audience as Agent and Object of Trauma: Destabilizing Distance _________ 155
Audience as Agent and Object of Trauma: Continuing to Weaken the Fourth
Wall __________________________________________________________ 165
Bracketing the Audience: Bringing Them In __________________________ 170
From the Page to the Stage, the Stage to the World: Audience as Continued
Collaborator, Audience as Sufferer __________________________________ 176
“I’m your Venus / I’m your fire / At your desire”_______________________ 185
Chapter 4 “August Wilson, Aunt Ester, and the Physicality of Trauma” __________ 190
The Gist of Gem_________________________________________________ 197
Citizens in Name Only____________________________________________ 203
Aunt Ester and Slavery: Trauma as Visiting and Vanquishing the Past ______ 209
Aunt Ester’s Bill of Sale: Texts, Trauma, and Choosing, Then and Now_____ 219
Citizen, the City of Bones, and the Physical World of Trauma_____________ 226
Healing in Gem _________________________________________________ 239
Chapter 5 “Concluding Thoughts”_________________________________________ 248
References ___________________________________________________________ 270
Abstract _____________________________________________________________ 291
Autobiographical Statement______________________________________________ 293
v
1
CHAPTER 1 TRAUMA AND DRAMA—A RATIONALE
Despite the layman’s belief that trauma is purely a medical problem, the study of
trauma belongs squarely within the humanities. Because of the obvious and outright
connections between trauma theory and literary study, studying trauma in the literature
classroom allows students to engage with various theoretical ideas and schools of
thought. Trauma first and foremost obviously has ties to psychology,1 and bringing
trauma theory into literature programs highlights both subjects’ focus on history and
historical power struggles.2 Literary study, trauma, and history singly and collectively
emphasize issues of historiography and the making of knowledge through the reclaiming
of experience.3 With its focus on the relationship between perpetrator, victim, and
bystander and on the relationship between the individual, the majority, and cultural
institutions, trauma additionally affords students the opportunity to engage with aspects
of sociolinguistics, communication theory, and cultural studies.4 An approach exploring

1 Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Moses and Monotheism capture basic ideas
about trauma, and Lacan’s story of a grieving father in “Tuché and the Automaton”
becomes an entry point to discuss trauma within deconstructionism, as does Derrida’s
centered/centerless circle; each of these authors have inspired various trauma theorists
and influenced discussions about mimesis, antimimesis, repetition, revision, temporality,
gaps, lack and a lack of absolute truths, and narrativization and master narratives. See
Caruth, Radstone, G. Hartman, Leys, and Belau among others.
2 Consider, for instance, Janet’s claims about female hysteria as outlined in Leys’s
Trauma: A Genealogy, studies about Holocaust survivors (e.g., Laub and Auerhahn,
Kidron, and Langer), or studies of those affected by the various armed conflicts of the
twentieth century (see Leys’s From Guilt to Shame, Tal, Farrell, and Strejilevich).
3 See Caruth, Eyal, Nora, de Certau, and LaCapra.
4 Herman as well as Alexander, Eyerman, and Smelser all focus on relational aspects of
trauma. Although she is not denying the biological consequences or legal/political
ramifications of trauma for the subject—she is, after all, writing about human rights
issues in her native Argentina—Strejilevich situates trauma fully within the realm of the
2
literature and trauma theory in tandem is productive and necessary because studying
trauma in literature allows us to see more readily trauma’s ties to identity politics and
power dynamics, especially as applied to members of traditionally disenfranchised
groups. Because healing from trauma—if indeed healing from trauma is a possibility, for
many argue it is not—is about learning and transformation, and because trauma is defined
through historical albeit (re)imagined moments, we can realize the degree to which
writers have the opportunity to affect (and ideally educate) large groups of people in an
instant. Indeed, if we consider Felman’s stories about teaching texts concerning
traumatizing events, using trauma theory in the literature classroom has personal, social,
and cultural ramifications for students.
Instructors who incorporate trauma theory in the literature classroom also offer
correctives to current trends in English education. Contemporary drama, which
undergraduate and graduate programs in literature typically and unfortunately ignore,
effectively captures issues of trauma and tales of disenfranchisement in ways other genres
cannot. Teaching trauma theory in the literature classroom thus becomes a means to
address drama’s “orphan” status. Additionally, teaching drama in the literature classroom
recognizes that, as a collective and communal forum, modern theater has long reflected
issues of those who lack power because of their social standing as it is shaped and
informed by issues of race, gender, socioeconomics, and sexual orientation. Consider, for

linguistic and the literary. Aware of the political need for courts to recognize trauma and
the ways in which traumatized individuals gain (or lose) credibility politically and
legally, Strejilevich specifically foregrounds the literary aspects of trauma by
concentrating on the performative speech act, testimonio, and the relationship between
speaker and audience.
3
example, how the Krigwa movement, the twentieth-century theater initiative that W.E.B.
Du Bois and the N.A.A.C.P. promoted as a means of promoting ideas and authors
struggling to find a place in mainstream society, provided opportunities for African-
Americans to see plays by and about them, a strategy reinvoked later in the twentieth
century during the Black Arts Movement; the manifestoes regarding drama that Larry
Neal and Amiri Baraka penned speak directly to this call for change. Similarly, the early
twentieth-century stage of the Provincetown Players, where Susan Glaspell and others
strove to put on solely American works, became a venue for playwrights to discuss
gender roles.
Besides being a venue that captures the violence and trauma that disenfranchised
groups have faced, the theater and plays (unlike novels, short stories, and poems) have
the potential to foster deeper insights into trauma—its nature, its effect on individuals, the
ways in which it manifests itself in an individual’s behavior, and the fact that it is tied to
the larger group and processes of cultural negotiation. Of all the genres, drama has the
potential to affect its audiences differently, both in terms of means and ends, and the
reason for this is uniquely tied to the physical and emotional effects trauma can have on
audiences and to the fact that trauma and drama are both collectively situated. Trauma by
its very nature is communal, and although many reduce trauma to one specific act of
violence inflicted on an individual—a specific wound—we must remember trauma does
not just arise from a single moment of violence, loss, or pain. It can occur across time,
space, and generations. Alexander, for example, reminds readers of the danger of viewing
trauma as merely an event rather than a social construct (8). After all, an event, he claims,