포스트모더니즘과 페미니스트 연극 = Postmodernism and Feminist Theater

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Postmodernism has been discussed since the 1960s. Ever since its argumentative discourse, postmodernism has been the center of academic discourse. Postmdernism forms itsef as a reaction against modernism. Modernism is an elite discourse; on the other hand, postmodernsm is a mass discourse. Postmodernism has driven modernists' high class, educated theory and consciousness into the ground. Postmodernism also renounces a logocentric elightened ideal, for the logocentricism divides the world into diverse hierarchies. Thus, class distinction, authoritarian organization, and environmental destruction are formed under the name of reason. Postmodernism rejects modernistic characteristics and emphasizes common ideas and equality. It encourages diversity and a harmony in disharmony.
One basic characteristic of postmodernism is de-centralization of power. Postmodernism deconstructs repressing authoritative power structure. Postmodernists reject the authoritative voice: they present the oppression of Father Law and at the same time depict constant resistance against the authority with an eventual success to be free from it.
In the 1950s, Western feminist s voiced their desire for freedom from patriarchal oppression. This voice ties up wonderuflly with postmodernism's major characteristic. Chris Weedon says, "Feminist criticism seeks to privilege feminist interest in the understanding and transformation of partriarchy". Literature educates women politically and sexually so that women free themselves from the patriarchal oppressive power.
Feminists believe that female potentialities have been suppressed and women bear the same importance as men. Feminist playwrights--Caryl Churchill, Pam Gems, Timberlake Wertenbaker--constantly depict the patriarchal oppression over women in their plays. They also present women achieving a spiritual rebirth--empowerment. Women, after having gone through oppressive lives, are now aware of reality and face life courageously.
Last, postmodernism extensively uses literature written in the past. It is called intertexuality. Present literature has borrowed even a small thing from the already existing literature, history, or myth. Also, feminist playwrights use past literature as well as mythologies when they try to demonstrate the female predicament. Wertenbaker uses the myh of Dionysos in The Love of the Nightingale. Churchill borrows the myth of Dionysos, which was already used in Euripides's The Bacchae, in her A Mouthful of Birds.
Feminist playwrights try to free women from patriarchal oppression and free their spiritual world so that they can discover their true selves and inner power. Feminist playwrights try to educate women politically. They, women attain power; they become empowered.