Signifyin(g) and Double-voicedness. An Investigation of Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs in Light of Henry Louis Gates's Theories of Signification

      Аннотация: Lorraine Hansberry’s dramas are dexterous dramatic rendition of the sufferings working class black families undergo in the racist and materialist culture of the United States and hence many critics regard them as prototypes of African American culture and identity. This research argues that Les Blancs incorporate “white” voice and culture alongside the “black” on such an intricate interdependency that each is defined by the other while at the same time challenged and questioned by it. As a result, they produce a hybrid discourse in which both voices are represented and their ideological framework is equally questioned and criticized. The researcher explicate the textual evidence for this hypothesis by employing the linguistic techniques of analysis available in Henry Louis Gates concepts of “double-voicedness” and “Signifyin(g)”. Being a distinguished contemporary scholar of African-American Studies, his linguistic approach to representations of racial identity borrows extensively from African cultural and mythological reservoirs to remold the concept of signifying by emphasizing the process of repetition and differentiation equally involved in meaning making processes.

Ключевые слова: African American Literature, Modern Drama, Criticism