The unbridgeable divide between black and white America in David Mamet's race : a poststructuralist study

Abstract EN

Drawing on a poststructuralist approach, the present paper tackles David Mamet's Race (2009) as a study of the gap between the black and the white Americans.

This will be done via a number of poststructuralist analytic tools such as the reader's conception of the sign away from the author, the diachronic method that relies on intertextuality and supports the idea of multivoiced language and multiple interpretations, and the feminist approach towards the patriarchal canon.

In a four-character political work comprising three scenes and depending on disjointed sentences and pauses, Mamet depicts the long-standing conflict between the blacks and the whites in America.

The paper has reached three findings.

(1) The reader-based analysis supports the white/black reader's views in Mamet's Race.

(2) The diachronic-synchronic relation in Mamet's dramatic dialogue has contributed to widening the gap between the whites and the blacks in the play.

(3) The play's black feminism was motivated by the patriarchal hegemony practised by white men.