Power Struggle in The Zoo Story: A Performance of Subjectivity

Edward Albee’s dramatic career was born in the context of postwar America and the counterculture of the 1950s and 60s to confront the contemporary politics and question the long-held social values. Likewise, Judith Butler’s work first appeared as a critique of identity within the social and political movements of contemporary America. Albee’s early play The Zoo Story (1959) voiced a critique of the existing social and political structure by bringing up a variety of issues such as gender, sexuality, family, class, power, identity, and communication. Butler’s work, embodying a post-structuralist account of identity, subjectivity, gender and sexuality, forms the backbone of the present study which aims to explore gender and power struggle in The Zoo Story. Albee’s characters, struggling within the boundaries of gender and the limits of socio-political regulations, lend themselves to a Butlerian approach eyeing upon gender and the relations of power. Investigation and juxtaposition of Albee’s plays and Butler’s work reveal that femininity and masculinity are not absolute, and no fixed gender as male or female can be defined; gender is not a fact, but a phenomenon that is reiterated and reproduced again and again over time. If certain gender traits are considered to be feminine or masculine, the reason must be looked for in the dominant cultural, political, social, and ideological discourses of the society which attempt to subject or abject individuals on whom they impose themselves. Entrance into the domain of agency, then, necessitates resisting the violence exerted by these regulatory frameworks.