Pinnock, Winsome. 2025. (Re)presenting History: The Black Dramatist and the Historiography of African Enslavement, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Racism. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

A major challenge facing black playwrights whose subject is the history and ongoing legacy of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is the fact that they are forced to use methods and materials which are impressed with the history and legacy of the slaveowners’ control and manipulation of the archive. This control resulted in the slaveowners’ domination of the historical narrative, and the wilful silencing and erasure of the voices and stories of the enslaved African. This thesis addresses the question of whether it is possible for the playwright to confront the limitations of conventional historiography by retrieving and reconstructing those stories to shift the perspective of the narrative history of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade from that of the enslaver to the enslaved. The thesis explores theories of hauntology which postulate the historical and psychological significance and impact of the traumatic past on the traumatised present to demonstrate the importance and impact of theatrical performance on the historiography of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The practice element of the thesis, the stage play Rockets and Blue Lights, deploys these theories to produce a play that allows black performers to embody lost ancestral narratives, thus reconstructing a buried history. The play uses dynamic immersive performance strategies such as the disruption of linear narrative and the dissolution of spatial and temporal boundaries to reanimate the lost histories of the enslaved and heal historical trauma.

In Writing History in Film (2006), William Guynn states that fictive output “by the nature of its signifiers, is [seen to be] incapable of fulfilling its mission of linking contemporary spectators to the reality of the past.” This thesis argues that black historical drama deconstructs the notion of representing the “reality of the past” to create a critically engaged practice that dramatizes the impact of history on the present. This critically engaged drama is informed by both fictional representations of the past as well as factual historical data. This drama employs dramaturgical strategies that challenge and make transparent the techniques of fiction (thick description, selectivity and narrative emphasis) deployed in historical narratives, as well as deploying those and other theatrical and metatheatrical techniques to reconstruct historical events. The thesis argues that this historiographic reconstruction has an impact on an audience that cannot be achieved by conventional historical narratives. This theatrical practice has the potential to disrupt the societal power relations produced by the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and to prevent historical amnesia by producing theatre that both retrieves and memorialises an erased history.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00039395
Keywords:	Hauntology, British Theatre and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Social Death, Colour Blind Casting, Crypted Memory, Black Playwrights, Dramaturgy, Postcolonial Drama
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Theatre and Performance (TAP)
Date:	31 July 2025
Item ID:	39395
Date Deposited:	14 Aug 2025 16:19
Last Modified:	14 Aug 2025 16:22
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39395

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