Racism and New Dimensions of Projecting the Multicultural Experience in Contemporary British Drama

• Název práce v češtině: Rasismus a Nové Rozměry Zobrazování Multikulturní Zkušenosti v Současném Britském Dramatu
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Racism and New Dimensions of Projecting the Multicultural Experience in Contemporary British Drama
• Klíčová slova: současné britské divadlo|multikulturalismus|rasa|rasismus|britská identita|národní identita|Roy Williams|debbie tucker green|Tanika Gupta
• Klíčová slova anglicky: contemporary British theatre|multiculturalism|race|racism|Britishness|national identity|Roy Williams|debbie tucker green|Tanika Gupta
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2017/2018
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
• Vedoucí / školitel: doc. Clare Wallace, M.A., Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno a potvrzeno stud. odd.
• Datum přihlášení: 22.05.2018
• Datum zadání: 30.05.2018
• Schválení administrátorem: zatím neschvalováno
• Datum potvrzení stud. oddělením: 04.06.2018
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 10.09.2019 00:00
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 18.08.2019
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 10.09.2019
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: odevzdaná studentem a finalizovaná
• Oponenti: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.

Zásady pro vypracování

Multiculturalism is a strategy for managing diversity in Britain. It provides an overarching ideological framework for justifying government policies and practices in dealing with the issues of race and ethnical relations. The positive discursive formation of multiculturalism is ambiguous and controversial as it represents a cultural pluralism in which the various ethnic groups collaborate and dialog with one another without having to sacrifice their identities. Nevertheless, contemporary British multiculturalism is “Janus-faced,”[1]it encapsulates within itself the potential to simultaneously generate harmony as well as division and strife, as some critics note that: "contemporary Britain is committed to being a ‘multicultural’ country … The ‘social cohesion’ recently promoted by government is articulated through traditions, institutions and imagery developed and rooted in prewar Britain, which means the current bipartisan appeal to ‘British values’ is arguably monocultural in orientation even if it is multiracial in application."[2] Hence, it is difficult to understand what is at stake in the contemporary politics in Britain without a sustained focus on cultural differences and politics of race and racism. The first decades of the twenty-first century saw a unique emergence of active playwrights in the cultural sphere as Roy Williams, debbie tucker green and Tanika Gupta. The plays of these writers portray new perspectives on the issues of race, ethnic diversity, identity and the meaning of Britishness in contemporary Britain; they further mirror how: "Widening ‘Britishness’ to include non-whites via a historically conditioned form of civic nationalism seems to grant racial inclusiveness at the price of cultural assimilation; or at least it must do if British national identity is to have any more substantive content than a pastiche of generic liberal-democratic values. In any event, even those more abstract values will clash with some minority cultural beliefs and practices."[3] Therefore, the politics, the dynamics articulation and representation of issues of race, ethnicity and belonging on the British stage, forms a major part of these playwrights’ works. The primary function of their writing tends to create a unitary sense of cultural and national identity that often linked with the newly formed process of nation building. With this in mind, the thesis presents a transparent look at the issues of race and racism that are embodied within the scope of Roy Williams, debbie tucker green and Tanika Gupta’s perspectives on the multicultural British society, and how they succeed in articulating the anxieties concerning the issues of identity and belonging. It aims to shed light on the cruelly racial world and to rethink questions of identity, Britishness, social agency and national affiliation.
The introductory chapter will explore how the current issues of race and racism are positioned within multicultural British society. It will investigate the changes in the British drama during the first decade of the twenty first century in dealing with these issues. According to Hall Stuart, since the 1980s the fixed concepts of race, racism and otherness have taken on new dimensions based on ‘difference and diversity,’ challenging the ‘Thatcherite concept of Englishness.’[4] The second chapter will focus on Roy Williams’s Sing Yer Heart Out For the Lads (2002), Sucker Punch (2010) and No Boys Cricket Club (1996). Williams stages sport in all its complexity as a rich ground for contemplating the issues of racism, belonging and identity. He portrays an image of the conflict among the ethnic communities in a multicultural space, highlighting that conflict in its larger context. Williams tells the complex mutual story of British and Caribbean identities in an exploration of notions of belonging which posits an alternative narrative of Britishness, a theme which retains its urgency in the current moment. The third chapter will discuss Tanika Gupta’s White Boy (2008) and Sugar Mummies (2006) which reflect the disappearance of a stable, homogenous English identity in a multiracial space. Gupta takes up the pronouncements on the tension between ‘black’ and ‘white’ in its larger context to explore racism from a complete different angle where the centre of being accepted in the selected community is not white, but black. She places her discussion in a wider context of the current challenges for identity – in particular around the emergence of new-cultural identities and beliefs in Britain. The fourth chapter will centre on the issue of violence, in particular knife crime, which is a consequence of racism. tucker green’s plays stoning mary (2005) and random (2008) look back at issues of memory, nation, violence and belonging. The complex three interlocking stories in stoning mary form discrete moments in a single story where the horrors result from contemporary conditions (the HIV crisis, child militia and violence) rather than being inflicted from within. The point is to strip the human agonies of any cushioning of race and geography to articulate the shattered hopes and anxieties concerning the issues of racism from a profound different perspective.
The thesis as a whole will contend that the emergence of new voices in twenty-first century British theatre stand out as pivotal. The works of these writers articulate a particular set of experiences that reflects an image of contemporary social issues that resonate throughout communities in London and beyond. Their work explicitly addresses the urgent social issues of the current era. They do not offer a solution to the obstacles which prevent the British society from living in harmony, but rather they reflect the hopes through the theatre’s stage which unite the people in a nation and enhance national identity and enable negotiation and interaction between different cultures.
[1]Richard T Ashcroft & Mark Bevir, “Multiculturalism in Contemporary Britain: Policy, Law and Theory, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (2017) 7.
[2]Ashcroft Richard T. & Bevir Mark, 7.
[3]Ashcroft Richard T. & Bevir Mark, 7.
[4]Peacock Keith D., The Question of Multiculturalism: The Plays of Roy Williams in Mary Luckhurst ed. A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama 1880-2005. US: Blackwell, 2006, 530-1.

Seznam odborné literatury

Ashcroft, Richard T. & Mark Bevir. “Multiculturalism in Contemporary Britain: Policy, Law and Theory.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 21.1 (2017): 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2017.1398443.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press, 1986.
Goddard, Lynette. Contemporary Black British Playwrights. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
green, debbie tucker. random. London: Bloomsbury, 2005.
green, debbie tucker. stoning mary. London: Nick Hern Books, 2008.
Gupta, Tanika. Sugar Mummies. London: Oberon, 2006.
Gupta, Tanika. White Boy. London: Oberon, 2008
Luckhurst, Mary ed. A Companion to The British and Irish Drama. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
Peacock, Keith D. “The Question of Multiculturalism: The Plays of Roy Williams.” In Mary Luckhurst ed. A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama 1880-2005. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
Pitcher, Ben. The Politics of Multiculturalism Race and Racism in Contemporary Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Williams, Roy. Sing Yer Hearts Out for the Lads. London: Methuen, 2006.
Williams, Roy. Sucker Punch. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Williams, Roy. No Boys Cricket Club. London: Bloomsbury, 2002.
Sierz, Aleks. Rewriting the Nation British Theatre Today. London: Methuen, 2011.