바라카의 『노예』에 나타난 통과제의와 희생제의

Amiri Baraka who emphasizes an authertic black ness tries to raise black consciousness and induce his audiences to participate in the revolution through his Black Revolutionary Theater. Baraka’s plays use ritual violence to purge black society of whiteness. The Slave, in which Baraka’s rite of passage into a new state of blackness is implied, portrays the rite of passage of a black militant, Walker, to exorcise his whiteness from the past. Walker’s rite of passage is in line with victimizing a white racist. The sacrificial ritual means the revenge for centuries of oppression against blacks. Though Walker himself also becomes a victim since he loses his daughters in the course of his ritual, he, nevertheless, contains within himself seeds for the regeneration through ritual. Baraka provokes audiences to subvert hegemonic discourses and oppressive power structures with the strategic use of rituals. His ritual theater tries to create political and social changes by reinforcing a communal ethos and establishing new identities. For Baraka, ritual theater is a political weapon to achieve a new blackness and a new subjectivity.