The Metaphor of Violence and Queer Relations in Sarah Kane’s Play, Cleansed: A Butlerian Gender Discourse Analysis

The present study attempts to provide an analytic exploration of the concept and the traumatic impact of heterosexual violence on [gender] identity of [the] people as they are purported to be in their actions. The analysis is going to be applied to one of Sarah Kanes masterworks, Cleansed, wherein its people, including all, are supervised and condemned to the surveillance of patriarchal discourse that stabilizes itself through its enforcer of violence. The study takes benefit of Judith Butlers postmodern feminist perception of gender and sexual identity and queer theory to deal with the dichotomous opposition taking place between the validated structure of power on one side and the subversive desire for inauthentic unintelligible identities on the other. To this end, the research article follows this scheme: At first, the function of violence trauma within the context of heteronormative culture is viewed, and then some key concepts of Butlerian gender identity will be pinpointed. And before exploring the challenge between the privileged voices of power in Cleansed, represented by Tinker, and some deviant subjects like Carl, Rod, and Grace, Kanes position as an avant-garde postmodern playwright along with her In-Yer-Face theatre to shock [British] audience out of their complacency to the prevailed cruelty will be explored.