Haunting the Archive: Trauma and Memory in Suzan Lori Parks’ The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World

Abstract

Aim: Suzan-Lori Parks’ The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1989) stages the haunting persistence of historical violence and racial erasure through a poetics of ritual, repetition and fragmentation. It would also examine the ways Parks brings into dialogue the chronicled history with the embodied acts of remembering, resisting the erasures of what she calls the “Great Hole of History” and reclaiming the Black presence through live, embodied acts of remembering.

Methodology and Approach: For the critical exegesis of the play, theoretical insights have been drawn from the fields of memory studies and trauma studies. Drawing on Dominick LaCapra’s distinction between “acting out” and “working through,” the paper argues that Parks’ recursive deaths of the Black Man figure embody trauma’s compulsive return.

Outcome: The attempted analysis of the Parks’ play arrives at an understanding that it acts as a medium of storytelling that envisions a space where reiterative reenactments create an ambiance for vivacious negotiations between past, present and future.

Conclusion and Significance: By privileging performance over archival history, Parks thus, reclaims the erased Black body and soul from historical invisibility, converting theatrical space into both a site of mourning and a repertoire of cultural survival where memory is not merely represented but continually performed, ensuring the endurance of Black history against the violence of erasure.