Grotesque realism in Dambudzo Marechera's drama

* This article was originally a paper read at the 2014 English Academy Conference.

Abstract

The Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera has been hailed for the modernist influences in his works. Marechera's literary outputs have also continued to fascinate contemporary readers because of the writer's overtly autobiographical writing style that was based on his outrageous lifestyle.While this article acknowledges the frequent observation that Marechera‘s work displays consistency of style, focus and purpose across his chosen literary genres (namely the novel, the poem, the short story and drama), I focus on the least studied genre in Marechera's literary output, his drama. I will argue that as an embodied art form that is meant for performance rather than private reading as literature, drama allows Marechera to perform the body as a significant site for elements of grotesque realism in his works. Using selected plays by Dambudzo Marechera as illustrations, the article will analyse the extent to which Marechera's plays present the body in performance as a site of post-independence social criticism where, as Mikhail Bakhtin and others critics observe, the material bodily principle with its predilection for consumption, food, drink, merry-making, death, excrement and sexual reproduction is exposed.

Key words:

• Mikhail Bakhtin
• embodiment
• grotesque
• Dambudzo Marechera
• performance
• scatological
• The Skin of Time: Plays by Buddy

Notes

* This article was originally a paper read at the 2014 English Academy Conference.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Owen Seda

OWEN SEdA is Head of the Department of Entertainment Technology at Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, RSA. A former Fulbright Scholar and recipient of a Fulbright Alumni Initiatives Awards Grant, he has also taught at the universities of Zimbabwe, Botswana, Africa University and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He holds a doctoral degree in Theatre Studies.