The Strategic Performativity In A Raisin In The Sun

Lorraine Hansberry is a well-known African American playwright.Although she only published two plays in her short life(her other works were published posthumously by her husband),her first play,A Raisin in the Sun,was performed on Broadway in 1959 and soon made a sensation at that time.The play revolves around $10,000 worth of life insurance compensation,presenting how the Afro-American family,the Youngers,and African intellectual Asagai struggle and negotiate in various discursive powers.This thesis mainly uses the research method of classification.Since the research object is the black Subjects in America,this paper divides the black Subjects in the play into black men,black women,black immigrant intellectuals and black individuals in different generations to explore: how Afro-American males and females interact with the discursive powers and construct self-identity through strategic performances under the influence of racial discourse and gender discourse;how African intellectual Asagai challenges the authority of the superior whites,who are always trying to unify narration,with the background of globalized age,and how they could better position themselves through their performances and enunciations;how the three generations of Afro-Americans in the play protect the blacks' culture and open up more discursive power for the future generation.By analyzing the performances of the characters in A Raisin in the Sun in different discourses as well as their different performances in the same discourse,this paper explores the significance of individual strategic performances in shaping individual identity in multi-dimensional spaces.Hopefully,in a more globalized and hybrid age,individuals can achieve a greater degree of “freedom”,and discursive power can give more leeway to individual choice.