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The Rituals of the Abject: Suzan-Lori Parks's The Red Letter Plays

In The Red Letter Plays, Suzan-Lori Parks portrays liminal situations of time and history in order to imagine and examine our cultural alternatives. The two Hesters, the protagonists of In the Blood and Fucking A, are social abjects who are black, impoverished, and illiterate. According to Julia Kristeva, the subject needs to recognize the abject to affirm its integrity. Performing the unnameable abject exposes gaps in signification and thus can be an exercise of rebellion against the Symbolic law. The abject dissolves the subject in jouissance, so jouissance potentially creates the opportunity for the generation of a new identity. The two Hesters enter a state of liminality when they experience jouissance reaching beyond the Symbolic. Hester La Negrita of In the Blood establishes a new identity through a ritual of resistance to social prejudice and oppression. Hester Smith of Fucking A exercises a counter-discourse with "TALK," which is a liminal and abjectional language. She attains an alternative identity through a resistant, salvational ritual. Both Hesters display Turnerian anti-structure and practice the subversive power of liminality. Both plays end with Artaudian cruel images through which the audience feels jouissance of healing and liberation.