A Study Of The "Hole" As A Heterotopia In Suzan-Lori Parks’s The America Play

Suzan-Lori Parks(1963-)is an outstanding dramatist in contemporary American theatre.She is the first African-American woman playwright who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.The America Play,one of Parks’ s early representative works,embodies her unique idea of dramatic creation.In the play,the “hole” is not only the setting of the play but a heterotopic space which combines Parks’ s thematic ideas and dramatic aestheticism.However,unfortunately,the “hole” as a special and significant space,has not received enough attention.This thesis attempts to employ the theory of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias and Black Aesthetics to analyze the “hole space” in The America Play.The thesis is aimed at elaborating how Parks uses the “hole space”to integrate her historical,political and cultural views as well as aesthetic ideas,thus constructing a kind of heterotopic poetics.This thesis points out that Parks’ s “hole” both inherits the tradition of the African American’s underground writing and fits well in Foucault’s theory of heterotopias.In The America Play,the “hole theatre” and “hole museum” present the typical characteristics of spatio-temporality of heterotopias which invert the spatio-temporal order of the real world,and subvert other conventional spaces.At the same time,the two black protagonists draw upon the theatrical performance and constructing museum to carry out tentative or radical reconstruction of history,forming a counterhistorical discourse to resist white historical writing.Thus,Parks’ s “hole heterotopia”perfectly renders the African American’s aesthetic pursuit of balancing the art and politics.