Ethnicity and Gender in Adrienne Kennedy’s The Owl Answers (1965).
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Date
2021
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Mouloud Mammeri University OF Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
This dissertation attempts to study Ethnicity and gender in Adrienne Kennedy’s play The Owl
Answers (1965). The aim is to provide an analysis of the way the playwright reveals how the
intersection of Ethnicity and gender contributed to the marginalization of black women in the
American society. To achieve this aim we have borrowed Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of
Intersectionality developed in her book: Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex
(1989). In the first chapter, we have examined the socio-historical context of the 1960s. We
have argued that the major events of the era had inspired and influenced the playwright’s
work, and that this period had excluded black women from social, economic, and political
institutions. In the second chapter, our study focuses on the issue of intersectionality in
relation to Kennedy’s female protagonist Clara Passmore, who keeps struggling against both
racial discrimination and sexism. Our main argument is that this intersection has led her to be
marginalized from American society because of being “black” and a “woman” at the same
time. After analyzing the work from the perspective of “intersectionality”, we have deduced
that the playwright’s antiracist feelings stand for the call for black women’s equal status in
society.
Description
58p. ; 30cm.+(cd)
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Littérature et civilisation