‘SUBALTERNITY’ and ‘RESISTANCE’ in Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972) and The Island (1973)
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Date
2022
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Publisher
Mouloud Mammeri University
Abstract
The present dissertation discusses the issue of ‘Subalternity’ and ‘Resistance’ in South
Afrikaner playwright Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1972) and The Island (1973).
Relying on the Italian Marxist and theorist Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of Subalternity and
Resistance from his Prison Notebooks (1948). Our dissertation investigates the ways into which
this committed white playwright depicts the Black South Africans not only as victims of the
discriminatory system of the Apartheid, but also as resistant to it. The first chapter discusses
Subalternity through identity and Passbook in the first play. It shows the dehumanizing
implications of the oppressors against the Blacks. Then we have demonstrated the injustice
applied on the prisoners and the brutality they have faced in the prison of the Island in the
second play. The second chapter handles the issue of the main characters’ act of resistance
through death in Sizwe Bansi is Dead, and in The Island the characters portray their resistance
through brotherhood by showing their solidarity and through art by making reference to
Antigone. One of the main findings of this piece of research concerns Fugard’s denunciation
of the Apartheid segregationist system and his voicing of the Black South African’s agency for
resistance.
Description
58p. : 30cm (CD-Rom)
Keywords
Apartheid, Subalternity, Resistance, Identity, Passbook, opposition, Art, Brotherhood
Citation
Littérature et Approches Interdisciplinaires