A psychosemiotic study of silence in selected plays by African American women dramatists

In spite of the fact that black feminist criticism foregrounds a historical necessity to configure the discursive nature of black woman's speaking self, its voice as well as its silence, not much has been done to critically study the interpretation of silence in African American women's drama. This research encompasses a historical overview of the role of silence and its semantic richness represented through the black woman's dramatic discourse. The research highlights the use of black woman's silence by African American women dramatists as a means for self-inscription, complementing this silence as a defense mechanism as well as a subversive or disruptive power or what Mae Gwendolyn Henderson describes "a counterdiscourse" (Butler, Feminists Theorize the Political 156) for black female literary and dramatic expression.;One major work of Marita Odette Bonner, Lorraine Hansberry, Ntozake Shange, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Robbie McCauley is examined through references to their other works as well as to those of other black women dramatists. By "signifyin(g) on" (to use Henry Louis Gates' term) the necrophilia caused by the patriarchal politics of speaking subjectivity in American Society, the plays written by these dramatists attempt to subvert the politics of distance and dominance. Their works compress the historical silences of black womanhood into a well-composed subject position within the African American as well as the American literary traditions.;In short, my research employs black women's silenced self and its psychosemiotics as a means to decipher the notion of the speaking subject. It contributes towards the idea of recognizing black women's voiceless-ness as a more meaningful and at times more powerful way to secure a subject position for them. Although the critical approaches used for tracing commonality of experience among the dramatists under research include theories informed by some European and American literary critics as well, my research highlights interconnections between African American women's drama and the black feminist approach in particular.