Dramatizing hegemony and counter-hegemony in Brian Friel's the freedom of the city and Saad al-Din Wahba's al-Sibinsa : a comparative study

Abstract EN

The current study attempts a comparative reading of the Irish dramatist and short-story teller, Brian Friel (1929-2015) and the Egyptian playwright and screenwriter, Saad al-Din Wahba (1925-1997), in the light of Gramsci’s theory of “cultural hegemony” and Spivak’s view of the “subaltern”.

two plays are selected for the study : friel’s the freedom of the city (1970) and Wahba's al-Sibinsa (1968).

in the politico-philosophical shades of Gramsci and Spivak, the analysis of these two plays involves four main issues concerning dramatic achievement.

firstly : although Friel and Wahba never voiced an impact of gramsci or spivak in their careers, both seem to be professional practitioners in a philosophical, literary school firmly established by such two theorists.

secondly : despite representing a wide variety of conflicting dramatis personae that can be divided into two heterogeneous camps, the oppressor and oppressed, each dramatist adopts a disparate dramatic vision.

thirdly : while Friel employs the flashback technique to unravel the tragedy of his three ‘marchers,’ Wahba depicts the pains of five ‘subalterns’ in terms of a direct plot line.

lastly : a close reading of the selected pieces may probably denote that, despite belonging to two different cultural backgrounds, both playwrights tend to dramatize the struggle for power between the voice of the colonizer and that of the colonized.

to achieve such an end, both writers make their plays hinge significantly on the field of semiotics-deictic references and on Austin’s and Searle’s innovative ideas concerning the functions of speech acts.