DIASPORA, CITIZENSHIP, AND GEOGRAPHIES OF IDENTITY IN THE DRAMATURGY OF AMIRI BARAKA AND AUGUST WILSON
DIASPORA, CITIZENSHIP, AND GEOGRAPHIES OF IDENTITY IN THE DRAMATURGY OF AMIRI BARAKA AND AUGUST WILSON
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Date
2014-07
Authors
OYIGBENU, ELIJAH PHILEMON
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Abstract
The question of reinventing African American citizenship and cultural identity
is a historical process that situates him as a victim of forced diaspora that saw
him unsolicited carted into the decks of slave ships and transported across
the vast Atlantic ocean to the New World to serve as free labor for the
economic exploitation of the new imperial and colonial powers and their
capitalist collaborators.
The struggle for identity, citizenship, freedom, and recognition began with
captivity which stripped the African slave of his hitherto freeman status.
Subjugated as a slave, he is repudiated and consigned to lower caste status as a
result of the endowment of his skin co-lour. Prior to the 1950s however,
African Americans’ effort centered on the drive for freedom, sometimes
eliciting calls for integration and assimilation into the mainstream culture.
In what became unprecedented move, the 1950s Civil Rights Movement
initiated the most organized and most formidable social movement in the
history of the United States which boldly confronted the nagging issue of
citizenship and political franchise for the African American. Hitherto, all
cultural and literary productions dwelt largely on inklings towards assimilation
and integration into the mainstream culture.
This study therefore sets out to explore the dramatically of Baraka and August Wilson
in order to articulate how the issue of diaspora, citizenship, and identity are
reinvented, and on what geographic locales and spaces. While Wilson concerns
himself with the intrigues of inter-racial and intra-racial relationship of black and
white, Baraka dwells largely on the doctrines of both the Black Power and the Black
Arts Movements in the construction of citizenship and identity.
This is an almost exclusively library research work. But because dearth of recent
materials in the areas of study, the researchers also has to dwell largely on the
internet.
Findings arising from this study show that for the African American to succeed in
constructing acceptable citizenship and the reinventing of proud racial identity, he
must develop communal and community consciousness that are ethically rooted as a
trope for survival and the exercise of rights that ensure and guarantee broad base
participation. Even this community consciousness has not been easy to formulate
because of obstacles that have been placed by institutional racism. Yet, against all
odds, the African American has made giant strides in asserting citizenship and
befitting identity.
Description
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF
POSTGRADUATE STUDIES, AHMADU BELLO
UNIVERSITY, ZARIA, FOR THE FULFILLMENT OF THE
AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(DRAMA)
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND DRAMA
FACULTY OF ARTS
AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY
ZARIA – NIGERIA
JULY, 2004
Keywords
DIASPORA,, CITIZENSHIP,, GEOGRAPHIES,, IDENTITY,, DRAMATURGY,, AMIRI BARAKA,, AUGUST WILSON