Constructing And Negotiating Identities In Frank Mc Guinness' S Someone Who'll Watch Over Me

Frank Mc Guinness is acclaimed as one of the most prolific and outstanding of contemporary Irish playwrights.His representative work Someone Who'll Watch Over Me(1992),a creation based on the Lebanon Hostage crisis,tells the experience of an American,an Irishman,and an Englishman who are kidnapped and imprisoned together in Lebanon.Most critical attention is paid on the national stereotypes abundant in the play,the metatheatrical experiences of the characters,and the intertextuality in the play.Though the issue of identity is touched upon,most critics neglect the characters absent on stage,the Arab captors and thus fail to discuss the multiple identities presented in the play.Therefore,by applying the related theories of identity of Stuart Hall,Edward Said,Judith Butler,etc.,this thesis intends to examine the construction and negotiation of multiple identities in the play,so as to uncover Mc Guinness' s thoughts on identity and the resultant conflicts.First of all,the thesis explores the national identities constructed among the three hostages and their images as national stereotypes.Holding on to national identities,the Irishman Edward and the Englishman Michael are often in conflicts,which are gradually negotiated by the mediation of the third-party American Adam,the development of a new solidary community,the attention paid to personal identities,the discovery of their commonalities and their mutual love.Then,it discusses the identities constructed between the hostages and the Arab captors.By degrading and stereotyping the Arab captors and the Arab world as the inferior Orientals and the Orient,the hostages construct their collective identity as the superior Westerners.Meanwhile,both sides are reduced to the uniform and hostile Other.Although the hostages make several positive attempts to negotiate with the captors,the Arabs' being silenced and being narrated in the language of Orientalist colonial make equal communication and negotiation unattainable.At last,it turns to the negotiation of gender traits in the hostages.Subject to the traditional masculinity ideology initially,Edward consciously displays the traditional masculine traits while Michael feels anxious about the traditional feminine traits in him.Later,both experience the change of gender traits and above all,both embrace the traditional feminine traits,deconstructing the binary opposition of masculinity and femininity.Through the construction and negotiation of multiple identities in the play,Mc Guinness shows his similar thoughts with cultural studies writers on the issue of identity.Rather than being an essence,identity is continually being constructed through similarity and more often difference.Meanwhile,he offers some enlightenment for the solving of conflicts brought by differences and advocates the fluidity of gender identity.Despite envisaging the possibility of negotiation between the West and the Arab world,Mc Guinness is still confined by orientalism,unable to present real and equal negotiation and offer good solutions to their conflicts.