To Be Free of Air: Narrative and Negation in the Alexander Plays

Drawn from the life experiences of Adrienne Kennedy and her son Adam P. Kennedy, the Alexander plays represent the central character, Suzanne Alexander, as a prolific writer often struggling to breathe in the suffocating, epistemic air of narrative. A similar trope finds notable resonance in Afropessimist theories. As such, this analysis attends to the Alexander plays and three overlapping premises: first, that Afropessimism and its conjoined critique from Black feminists reveal significant understandings as narrative theory; second, that the epistemological questions raised by Afropessimism in regard to narrativity reverberate across the Alexander pieces; and last, that the Alexander stories challenge the racializing force of narrative, but with questions as to the fundamental efficacy of such efforts. These premises then span a three-part study. The first part concentrates on She Talks to Beethoven, The Film Club, and The Dramatic Circle, all of which deal with Kennedy's travels to/from Ghana and the role of narrative in the conscription of Black subjecthood to social death. Attention then goes to The Ohio State Murders, where the violent drama of emplotment that would seem to enact a constant state of narrative/loss for Black subjects is undercut by a nondramatic, academic reading. Finally, focus turns to Sleep Deprivation Chamber along with two other Alexander pieces, Letter to My Students on My Sixty-first Birthday by Suzanne Alexander and Motherhood 2000—all emanating from Adam Kennedy's experience of being racially profiled. Here, narrative's condition of non-altering negation receives scrutiny. The question of "what can be done" then circles back to how Black writers working through and against narrative employ various discursive strategies to envision possibilities of social justice that should be, but may never be, realized.