Title: ALTERNATIVE POLITICAL DISCOURSES IN ARIEL DORFMAN'S DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
Abstract: In Death and Maiden, Ariel Dorfman explores painful process a country has to un dergo in its transition to democracy, after years of suffering a dictatorship. Taking as basis of his play a woman's agonised past, playwright moves on to more general issues in search of truth that will explain both personal and political. However, when victim, alleged torturer and mediator -the three characters in play- confront each other, we realise, as Foucault states, that: the achievement of 'true' discourses is one of fundamental problems of West. The history as true -is still virgin territory. This paper attempts to study how three alternative discourses are constructed and counterpointed, and to what extent, by using defamiliarising techniques, issues they deal with involve readers and spectators alike. Furthermore, semiotically marked progress of woman - from hiding in a corner, to controlling action - will be carefully analysed in order to grasp 'truth' in play's pivotal discourse. What kind of a process does a country have to undergo in its transition to democracy? How can toppled dictators co-exist with their former victims? What happens to powerless when they get in power? What is value of a system of justice that conspires to suppress truth? What is our responsibility towards those who suffered most? These are some of questions Ariel Dorfman, Chilean playwright born in Argentina, raises in his play Death and Maiden (1991). Critical consensus describes this work as a political play, as it clearly fits into definition of kind of drama that provides a critique of dominant ideology. Yet, as Holderness has argued (1992), politics of a play cannot be confined to its content; it also needs a politics of form and of function; that is, a political play not only challenges and interrogates dominant ideology but also, and more significantly, both exposes mechanisms of its own construction -in Brechtian terms 'lays bare device' (Willett 1964, 143)- and defamiliarises conventional naturalistic relation between audience and stage, while shattering traditional expectations. As will be seen, play in question effectively conflates a politics of content with a politics of form and function. To begin to provide an answer to initial questions, it is important first to look at Michael Foucault's theories on power, which I have found particularly useful in studying three different political discourses present in play. In second and third sections of this essay, I discuss some of ways such a dynamics of power, in conjunction with feminist and semiotic insight, might be applied in order to analyse both heroine's semiotically marked progress and final political response play offers. Postmodern theory and practice have put forward new notions on language which bring into question totalizing, value-neutral discourses of positivistic theory and liberal humanism. Further, they make us aware of fact that language can constitute that which it represents, and is, therefore, at basis of power (Barthes 1982, 459). In addition, given fact that language is always used in precise social, historical and political frameworks, we may conclude it constructs meaning (Williams 1977, 55) and generates ideology -which, in Eagleton's terms, could be defined as: the ways in which what we
Publication Year: 1996
Publication Date: 1996-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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