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Recalling the Past in Postcolonial Drama: From Counter-History to Sociopolitical Redress
Abstract
Through examining the texts of Ama Ata Aidoo's play Anowa (1970), Jack Davis's play Kullark (or Home)(1979), and Dennis Scott's play An Echo in the Bone (1974); this paper shows how postcolonial drama functions as an effective means for exploring occluded pre-colonial and colonial periods through constructing alternative histories that both refract the official accounts of the colonialist history and redress or treat contemporary societal and political exclusions. To this end, the researchers argue that the counter-discursive/ counter-historical task of many historical postcolonial dramas is to reconstruct their histories in a way that confirms the essential socio-political function of such plays. In this sense, a conscious linkage is being made between contemporary post-colonial communities and their past pre-colonial and colonial histories.
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.5p.71
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