Dramatizing Silence and Women’s Agency in Angel’s Diary
Loading...
Date
2019-12
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Journal of Language, Technology & Entrepreneurship in Africa
Abstract
This article examines the different mechanisms used by women in Angel’s Diary, a popular
television theatre text aired on Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) to demonstrate their
agency. Using Angel’s Diary as its point of reference, the article interrogates the dynamics of
women’s position that characterize their existence and their inexorable struggle to affirm their
potential in a limiting and unequal society. The positioning of women in the society is informed
by historical, economic, political, social and cultural experiences in Africa that place a woman in
a marginal locus. The article therefore deals with strategies that women use to overcome the
inequalities, dominations and ‘normalized’ practices that are manifestations of domination and
silencing apparatus of various aspects of women’s potential. Methodologically, the paper
employed qualitative approach in reading Angel’s Diary. Content analysis of video tapes was the
primary method used. In content analysis, I interrogated ways employed by women to subvert
social norms, forms of domination and the eventual resistance to emancipate the self. The article
found out that women characters in Angel’s Diary employ strategies such as the journey, music,
monologues, and silence to transcend the limitation created around them and perpetuated through
the father figure.
Description
Keywords
domination, subordination, silence, agency, subversion, resistance, family