Sweat AO5 Quotes Flashcards
Kimberle Crenshaw - dimensions
Multiple dimensions of inequality do not exist separately from one another but rather are constructed in relation to one another
Janak Paudyal - intersectionality
Sweat represents an equation which consists of intersectional variables like race, class and gender that work together to position African and migrant workers at the bottom of the hierarchy
Intersectionality has become the primary analytic tool in feminist and anti-racist scholarship to understand identity and oppression
What structurally sets apart the working class in 2000?
NAFTA
Breakdown of unionisation through government and corporate strategies
Courtney Elkin Mohler - dual time structure
Nottage splices the more innocent moments of 2000 with senses of destitution set in 2008, which are made all the more tragic because of their chronological proximity to our own moment
Linda Hutcheon and Courtney Elkin Mohler - Nostalgia
the element of response - of active participation, both intellectual and affective
Hermeneutic similarity - one feels nostalgic, longing for an idealised time, dissatisfied with the present moment; one perceives something as ironic. In the case of ironised nostalgia, those nostalgic pangs are coupled with the recognition of their romanticisation, that the moment for which one longs has been largely invented - how ironic!
The distance necessary for reflective thought about the present as well as the past
Christina McMahon - economic revival
Reading is either a harbinger of economic revival for the nation or else the ‘canary in the coal mine’ for what may befall cities in similar situations at the start of the new millennium
The irony here is that his vision of economic self-empowerment is tied to a multinational corporation, which only casts more doubt on the redemptive possibilities of businesses rooted in Reading itself
While Oscar symbolises a rise in Latino business leadership in Reading, he also portends a recovered sense of humanity among these workers, whose lives have intersected in such tragic ways
David Roman - colour
The colour that Nottage wants to foreground in Sweat is not black, but blue
David Roman - class consciousness
The tragedy of the play resides in their failure to improve their lives despite their efforts to do so
Vernacular speech - no character achieves a divine political awakening
Emine Fisek - masculine labour
Nottage’s decision to represent working-class masculinity through the lens of a childhood memory is complicated; this move renders the romance with masculine labour into an emblem from an almost mythical past
Emine Fisek - unreliable narrator
Nottage’s goal is less to condemn Stan for colluding in the silencing of Tracey’s memory, than to underline the extent to which memory, with all of its subjective blindspots, crossreferences, elisions and emphases, is at stake in the characters’ narrative attempts at making sense of their exploitation
Emine Fisek - gendered pressure
It is perhaps not surprising then that the gendered pressure described by Chris soon precipitates in the play’s climactic violence against Oscar, which is egged on by Tracey’s explicitly sexualised language of shame: “We will be fucked”
Emine Fisek - shifting racial dynamics
The “old white cat” that confronts Bruce displays how the stigma of being “fresh off the boat” is never about an individual’s geographic origins but about an ever-shifting racial imaginary of deserving vs usurping laborers
Emine Fisek - the body
Rather, in these plays, the body itself is always already leveraged, an asset that exists in a precarious space between gain and loss
Marwa Ghazi Mohammed - victimisation
Oscar and Stan are not victims of Chris and Jason. The four are victimised by poverty and marginalization
Marwa Ghazi Mohammed - cyclical
Nottage weaves the past and the present to show how history repeats itself in the same way as the workers are always the victims who pay the price
The white American workers were threatened by being unemployed when African Americans were hired at lower wages, and now Latinos are replacing both groups in the 21st century
Marwa Ghazi Mohammed - inevitable
Nottage has depicted the inevitable racial violence as the consequence of depression and unemployment
