Citation

Crawford MN. Modern Drama 2019; 62(4): 483-501.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019)

DOI

10.3138/MD.S1023R

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article explores performances of slavery and the afterlife of slavery in drama of the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement. I use Amiri Baraka's theory of "atmos-feeling" as a means of analysing the Black Arts Movement's undoing of the equation of the black body and the slave body. Through an analysis of a wide range of plays ( The Slave, Slave Ship, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, and Funnyhouse of a Negro), I uncover the differences between the Black Arts Movement framing of slavery and twenty-first-century Afro-pessimism. © University of Toronto.

Language: en

Keywords

Adrienne Kennedy; Amiri Baraka; For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf; Funnyhouse of a Negro; Ntozake Shange; Slave Ship; The Slave