Lynching and its Representation in African American Drama: Traumatic Memory in Sleep Deprivation Chamber and Rachel

The harrowing memories of lynching as a method of historical implementation of terror and violence and its present day presentation as myriads of novel forms including racial profiling, highway racism, and traffic stop harshly imposed on generations of African American people have been portrayed in numerous dramatic works of African American dramatists. Lynching is generally referred to as a quasi-ritual and extra-legal act of punishment and retribution, which has been exercised throughout history as a method of intimidation and inducing terror and violence against religious and ethnic minorities in order to deprive them of social and political rights and function in a society. What should be accentuated is the far-reaching impact of such an atrocity on its victim's mentality and identity. Collective trauma and agonizingly invisible memories of humiliation, exploitation, racial discrimination, physical assault and sexual abuse experienced by black people resonate in dramatic renderings of many black playwrights. This paper aims to examine in depth black people's traumatic encounter with savagery and coercion and its ensuing psychic impact on the black community. For this purpose, Angelina Weld Grimke's Rachel (produced in 1916 and published in 1920) and Adam and Adrienne Kennedy's Sleep Deprivation Chamber (1996) will be studies in order to trace the footprints of ubiquitous racism and its jarringly traumatic impact on the black psyche. The horrendous account of police atrocity, the 'modern day lynching', against Teddy Alexander, a black youngster, and its subsequent repercussions in the private and public lives of his black family finds its way in the fragmented pieces of memory and repetitious moments of nightmare. Psychological and emotional effects of lynching resembling permanent burns inscribed both on black bodies and black minds are reflected in Rachel's traumatized mind colliding with many rising conflicts in a white supremacist society that eventually leads to her total abandonment of sexual life and motherhood. The article intends to inquire into the long-term impact of lynching and racial atrocities on the black collective psyche and the mechanisms through which one can articulate traumatized memories and lived experience. To achieve this goal, theories of Christina Wald, which rely heavily on the psychological and psychoanalytical aspects of dramatic works, will be employed. By explaining and defining "Trauma Drama", Wald has striven to discover and analyse the hidden traces of racial violence on the soul and psyche of the victim's personality and its tremendous impact on the quality of life and decision making in the real world. The article also tries to explore the psychological effects of racially motivated hatred and hostility toward black people and how the characters of the aforementioned plays face racist assault and agonizingly atrocious behaviour from the white supremacist society through expressing their lived experiences derived from trauma and post-traumatic aftermath of the racist incident in the form of linguistic mechanisms. What is highlighted in this paper is the characters' attempt to assert their traumatized personality through remembering those first-hand accounts of racially motivated attacks and striving to elicit empathy and understanding from both people surrounding them and the audience.