Metaphor of Violence and Queer Relations in Sarah Kane's Play, Cleansed: A Butlerian Gender Study

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 on one of Sarah Kane’s master works, 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 Butler’s postmodern feminism perception of Gender and Sex Identity and Queer theory to deal with the dichotomous opposition taking place between the legitimized structure of power on one side and the subversive desire of 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 delineated. 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, Kane’s position as an avant-garde postmodern playwright along with her In-Yer-Face theater to shock [British] audience out of their complacency to the prevailed cruelty will be pinpointed. In the long run, the probable-possible legitimacy of homonormative/homosexual gender roles will be highlighted against the poweroriented yet arbitrary heteronormative identities as dramatized under Kane’s avant-garde pen.