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العنوان
Power and Resistance in Post 9/11 Theatre in
Anne Nelson’s The Guys (2002), Dennis Kelly’s Osama the Hero (2005)
and Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (2012) /
المؤلف
Mostafa, Asmaa Mohamed.
هيئة الاعداد
باحث / أسماء محمد مصطفى محمود
مشرف / سلوى رشاد أمين
مشرف / هالة سيد متولي
تاريخ النشر
2022.
عدد الصفحات
152 P. :
اللغة
الإنجليزية
الدرجة
ماجستير
التخصص
الأدب والنظرية الأدبية
تاريخ الإجازة
1/1/2022
مكان الإجازة
جامعة عين شمس - كلية الألسن - قسم اللغة الانجليزية
الفهرس
Only 14 pages are availabe for public view

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Abstract

In 2001, more than 2,977 have been killed during the terroristic attacks on World Trade
Centre twin towers. This great trauma has not just affected USA as being the greatest power in the
whole world but it is also considered as a turning point that keeps resonating in the world’s minds
whatever their cultures are. This invincible American power has been encountered by
counteraction, turning its hierarchical form of power into a deconstructed one and empowering the
resistance to take over. Apart from the political scene that took place through the events of 9/11,
literature and stage performance, in particular, have been dramatically affected by that
unforgettable experience. Post 9/11 theatre has focused on the events and the relationship between
power and resistance. Theories of power have witnessed a progression from ideology and
hegemony to discourse. Engaging with poststructuralism, these theories have come to
contextualize the intersection between cultural knowledge and social power. To trace these
movements, concepts of power will be explored as they evolved from their ideological notions to
rupture and decentralization.
This thesis deals with the study of the relationship between power and resistance in the
context of the 9/11 events and their effects on different groups inside and outside American society.
The study aims to refute the Marxist conception of the concept of power and authority from the
traditional and stereotypical concept that power is centered in a state and its organs and that its
forms of influence range from the use of violence on the one hand and the use of ideology on the
other hand to the concept of power based on the fact that it is not ownership but rather a strategy
in the form of maneuvers, techniques, and tactics. In light of this, the concept of resistance does
not end because it is a counter-power. Rather, it is present everywhere in the network of power
relations, and there are no clear lines between power and resistance.
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The first chapter is dedicated for Anne Nelson’s play, The Guys (2002) that sheds light on
the atrocities of 9/11 events specifically on a group that suffered the most from those events.
According to Althusser’s theory of Ideology propagation and State power, the play proves that the
voice of oppression and power cannot see or listen to anyone but itself; the play proves to be
univocal. It shows how the American firefighters sacrificed their lives without being hesitant to
rescue people’s lives. Despite, focusing on the iconic American firefighters, the play neglects the
other marginalized categories behind the terroristic attacks.
In Nelson’s documentary play, Joan (Sigourney Weaver) is a veteran journalist who finds
herself taking on an unusual assignment. Nick is a captain in the New York Fire Department who
lost eight of the twelve men in his company while attempting to evacuate the World Trade Center
twin towers following the terrorist attacks. Nick has been given the responsibility of delivering
their eulogies at a series of memorial services, but Nick has no experience with such things and is
not sure of what to say. Joan volunteers to help, and over the course of several days she interviews
Nick, finding out how much (or how little) he knew about the men under his command, and
together they try to find the words to honor each man’s memory, and pay tribute to their sacrifices
in the larger picture of a national tragedy.
The second chapter tackles Dennis Kelly’s play, Osama the Hero (2005). The play tells the
story of a naïve seventeen - year - old teenager called Gary. He is a student who believes everyone
is tolerant and mature enough to understand that people have different opinions. He is asked to
present a school project about the most worthy hero from his point of view. However, when he
shares his views at school he realizes that not everyone shares the same outlook as him. He is
brutally attacked because of his point of view which supports the resistance side of 9/11 events.
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Consequently, Gary gets savagely bombarded by young thugs for being different and becomes a
victim to numerous firebombing attacks for which he is blamed.
Osama the Hero (2005) highlights that, in its game of power, the vicious circle of
violence and aggression is endless. Different views and perspectives are not accepted. The play is
about the essentializing norms of power that repress imagining and creating new power
relationships for the future. Based on Gramsci’s theory of hegemonic power, the play shows how
the western community has been greatly influenced by the spread of stereotypes, tries to make no
room for any other possible point of view to be raised. In fact, the western community has long
been blinded by the thoughts and stereotypes spread by America’s hegemonic power and denied
any form of resistance embodied in 9/11 events. Moreover, it has grown more aggressive and
violent towards any point of view that may agree with or glorify any figure of resistance. In Kelly’s
play, the marginalized is presented as a name only which is Osama bin Laden, not as a body. Gary
is the only character who voices the resistance through supporting Osama bin Laden whose
existence in the play does not appear except through his mentioned name. Unfortunately, the
voices of those supporters who are considered to be against the mainstream are brutally attacked.
It is all about establishing new barriers and new symbols which are aimed to thwart efforts to
widen the scope of conflict.
The third chapter analyzes Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (2012). The controversial point
of this play is the inner struggle of identity and the feeling of being ashamed as a Muslim ethnic
person post 9/11 events. Ethnicity has been inflamed by racism and prejudice against whoever is
related to Arab or Islam, or those who deviate from America’s invincible power. Those Arab or
Muslim Americans became torn between the two cultures, trying to defend themselves and justify
a sin that they have never committed themselves.
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Set in America, the play is about Amir Kapoor who works as a lawyer in a prestigious
New York firm. He is in his thirties and about to be promoted to a higher position. He is in love
with his wife, Emily who works as an artist. Amir’s nephew, Abe changed his name and style of
dress in order to look more American or less of a potential terrorist threat to white Americans. Abe
asks Amir to support the case of an Imam (Islamic religious leader) who has been imprisoned
without any cause. Unfortunately, Amir’s career and personal life start to get complicated once he
responds to his nephew’s demand. When Amir and his artist wife, Emily, host an intimate dinner
party with their two colleagues and friends, he begins to realize that the life he has built for himself
might have been fake. The friendly dinner party soon escalates into an intense conversation
involving religion, race and violence. Accusations are spoken, truths are revealed, and Amir’s life
will never be the same again.
Through applying Foucault’s theory of discourse, Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (2012) is
found embodying such numerable inner struggles of identity through many characters who present
how people who are not non-Americans or have Islamic roots are totally marginalized and
suspected as terrorists. Eventually, this play shows how non-Americans and those of Islamic roots
present multiple clear voices of resistance though marginalized by American society. Besides, the
play asserts how an organizational strength can have a significant influence on the shaping of
people’s political perception, especially of those belonging to powerless and highly dependent
groups. Here comes the turning point where power shifts from bottom to top, where those
marginalized people have been turned into atomic bombs that have raptured the hierarchy of
power, leading to variable sorts of resistance that take over.
The thesis answers the following questions: How has 9/11 revealed the problematic nature
of the relation between power and resistance in the light of Foucault’s theory of power? How have
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the plays, in question, in terms of their diverse cultures, investigated the narrative that dominated
the political scene following 9/11 events? In which ways do the plays discussed offer different
routes of resistance to the dominant power by providing alternative spaces from which 9/11 can
be re-examined and critiqued? Who are given voices and who are silenced in the plays? How has
the terrorist prefigured in the plays? How are the audience members given a space to re-create and
become empowered themselves?
The thesis will be divided into an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion. The
introduction will be devoted to the theoretical framework. Each play will be analyzed in the light
of the modern and postmodern theories of power to show the weaving and interweaving of power
relations as they prefigure in American, British and Ethnic post 9/11 theatre with special reference
to Michael Foucault. The conclusion presents a summing up of the thesis as a whole in addition to
its logical outcome that grows from the previous analysis and provides sufficient answers for the
raised questions.