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Race and Differentiated Geography in Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror and Twilight

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2015, 28(3), pp.257-277
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Jung,Byung-Eon 1

1부산대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the ways in which race and space are socially constructed to provide a typical strategy for legitimating racial domination and differentiated places in Anna Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror and Twilight, by utilizing Neil Smith’s theory of space. Mainly caused from what she calls “the dangers of being relegated to a ‘place’” in relation to race, the riots in Crown Heights and Los Angeles are central to the approach in that the relation between race and space can be considered as a theoretical foundation for understanding racially differentiated geographies. This essay places identity politics at the heart of racial conflicts among groups such as African Americans, Jewish Americans, Korean Americans, and Mexican Americans. Racial identities construct the space for generating the distance from the others as the differentiated geographies assigned to them construct these identities. The racial others’ experience of being racially differentiated in these plays ultimately results from the construction of race identities that assign racial meaning to these regions. After exploring these processes, this essay argues that Fires in the Mirror and Twilight propose “the possibility of crossing over a [racial] line” by challenging race and the differentiated spaces it supports.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.