A Bakhtinian Dialogic Approach To Dutchman

Imamu Amiri Baraka, a leading African-American playwright, poet, essayist and novelist, is one of the advocates and prime movers of the revolutionary Black Theatre and the contemporary Black Arts Movement. Dutchman, his masterpiece, with the theme of national identity and self-actualization, won him an Obie Award and established his world-wide reputation. This play sets its background in the1960s’ America, depicting the encounter of a middle-aged white woman and a young black man, whose initial chitchat grows into a dispute and finally lead to the white woman’s murder of the black man. Baraka presents to us the social injustice and prejudice the African-Americans are suffering in a white-dominated society. Together with his other revolutionary works, he advocates a joint alliance of the black people to fight for their equal rights in this play.In the late20th century, Mikhail M. Bakhtin broke the traditional view of confining dialogue in the field of rhetoric and reconstructs a dialogical rhetoric as a mutual testing, contesting, and creating of ideas between listener and speaker, writers and readers. By employing the concepts of "otherness","great dialogue","microdialogue","unfinalizability" of dialogism of Bakhtin, this thesis aims to analyze the revolutionary theme and structure of Dutchman, thus to explore Baraka’s national awareness and revolutionary intention to write this play.Besides the introduction and conclusion, this thesis is divided into four chapters:The part of Introduction mainly covers a brief introduction to Imamu Amiri Baraka and his works, the literature review on Dutchman and the significance of the study.Chapter One makes a brief introduction to the development and the key concepts of Bakhtin’s Dialogism. Liberating dialogue from the field of rhetoric, and abstracting it from concrete dialogues, Bakhtin entitles it with a communicating spirit,which is called "dialogicality", and establishes an equal dialogic relation between the speaker and the audience. His concepts of "other’s discourse" serves as the basis of a dialogue. The structure of the play and the development of the charcters’consciousness are explored in the framework of the two modes of dialogue, great Dialogue and microdialogue. Unfinalizability and potential dialogue make a polyphonic work open-ended and an on-going dialogic process.Chapter Two discusses the basis and purpose of the dialogue, analyzing the differences of the two characters in all levels, and their intention to maintain a dialogic relation. Lula and Clay, representing different social groups, distinguishes each other in economic condition, educational level and consciousness, supplying the prerequisite for their dialogue to go on. Their respective purposes in the dialogue are further explored. Language quarrel is deeply rooted in their intention to rationalize their own cultural beliefs and repel the other’s.Chapter Three probes into the structure of Dutchman and the development of the characters’consciousness from the two modes of dialogue. Analyzing the relationship between Lula and Clay from flirting to battling in the framework of Great dialogue, their mental state development is revealed in this thesis. Microdialogue voices the revolutionary consciousness and passion of Clay, a spokesman of the African-Americans.Chapter Four explores the unfinalizability and potential dialogue of Dutchman, which lead to the unclosedness and indeterminancy of the play. Through analyzing the elusive images of Lula and Clay which are shaped by the unfinalizability of the their consciousness and thought, and unfinalizability of the language, the profound practical meaning of Dutchman is revealed, and is further expanded by the potential dialogue of Baraka.The last part serves as a conclusion, indicating that approaching the play Dutchman and its author Amiri Baraka via Dialogism of Bakhtin is a beneficial way to explore the dialogicality, dialogic relationships, and unfinalizability of the play. Cultural discrimination and suppression are never good ways to solve disputes between different cultural consciousness. Each side is called for taking dialogue as an effective approach to settle problems.