THE DEINDUSTRIAL GENERATION: MEMORY, BIOGRAPHY AND THE BODY IN LYNN NOTTAGE'S SWEAT

Abstract

American playwright Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Sweat (2017), is set in the town of Reading, Pennsylvania, and traces the life of a working-class community as they experience the devastating, multi-faceted effects of deindustrialization across the first decade of the twenty-first century. While concerned with the changing nature of American manufacturing under late capitalism, the play’s depiction of labor draws on a broader historical lens, and charts the intergenerational transmission of class inequalities over time. Nottage uses a series of formal and structural strategies to draw attention to how characters remember and narrate the past, and how these memories’ racial and gendered tensions ultimately constrain their efforts at mobilization. In its focus on memory, biography, and the body, Sweat not only participates in what has been called the recent deindustrialization literature, but also revisits some of the key aesthetic choices surrounding the depiction of capitalism in modern American drama.

Keywords

• Lynn Nottage,Sweat,modern drama,capitalism,deindustrialization,memory

SANAYİSİZ NESİL: LYNN NOTTAGE'IN SWEAT OYUNUNDA BELLEK, BİYOGRAFİ VE BEDEN

Abstract

Amerikan oyun yazarı Lynn Nottage’ın Pulitzer Ödülü alan oyunu Sweat (2017), Pennsylvania eyaletinin Reading şehrinde geçer ve yirmi birinci yüzyılın başlangıcında bu şehirde yaşayan ve işçi sınıfının parçası olan bir topluluğun sanayisizleşmenin beraberinde getirdiği kapsamlı yıkımı nasıl tecrübe ettiklerini anlatır. Oyun, kapitalizmin geç döneminde Amerikan üretiminin değişimiyle ilgilenir, fakat emek sorunsalını daha geniş bir tarihsel çerçevede ele alır ve sınıf eşitsizliklerinin nesiller arasında nasıl tekrarlanıp yeniden üretildiklerini gösterir. Nottage oyunda bazı formel ve yapısal stratejiler kullanarak karakterlerin geçmişi nasıl hatırladıklarını ve anlattıklarını, ve bu hatıraların toplumsal cinsiyet ve ırk açısından taşıdıkları gerginliklerin işçilerin güncel seferberliklerini nasıl etkilediğini inceler. Bellek, biyografi ve beden sorunsalları üzerinde duran Sweat sadece sanayisizleşmeyi anlatan edebi akıma katkıda bulunmaz, aynı zamanda modern Amerikan tiyatrosunun kapitalizmi tasvir edişindeki estetik seçimleri de yeniden ele alır.

Keywords

• Lynn Nottage,Sweat,modern drama,kapitalizm,sanayisizleşme,bellek

References

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