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Cruel Britannia: Sarah Kane's Postmodern Traumatics examines four
plays by British playwright Sarah Kane (1971-1999), all written
between 1995 and 1999 within the context of the "Cool Britannia",
or "In-Yer-Face" London theatre movement of the 1990s. Kane's plays
were notorious for their shocking productions and challenging and
offensive subject matter. This book analyzes her plays as products
of a long history of theatrical convention and experimentation,
rather than trend. I read Kane's plays through an optic of trauma
theory, and link the trauma to postmodern experience as defined by
war, inter-personal violence, repetitive memory, and sex as medium
of violence. Kane's plays' unrelenting violence and graphic
depictions of violent sex suggest a relationship with theories and
practices such as Artaud's theatre of cruelty, and Kroker and
Cook's theory of the postmodern as sign of excremental culture and
an inherently abject state of being. Through a play by play
analysis I conclude that Kane's work suggests that violence and
trauma are endemic to postmodern life, and are ultimately
apocalyptic due to their culmination in Kane's final play, the
suicide text of 4.48 Psychosis.
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