Abstract

LEGITIMIZED RACISM IN SHARON POLLOCK'STHE KOMAGATA MARU INCIDENT

Ranya Jassam Hamad, Sabah Atallah Diyaiy

Volume: 8 Issue: 4 2018

Abstract:

Sharon Pollock (1936- ) was one of the major contributors to the Anglophone-Canadian theatre that seeks to establish Canadian power through identity. Her effort coincided with the seventies' epoch of Canadian national theatrical awakening. Pollock was provoked by the rarity of Canadian stories on the stage. She realized that the literary production was dominated by the United States or England and the actors were intended to sound like English or the United States. During that Period, she focused on establishing the Canadian independent identity through the production of historical stories. Being newly de-colonized country, Canada wanted to establish a white identity through the racial selection of the desirables and the exclusion of the non-European immigrants.Pollock's historical Inquiry revealed the methods that Canada utilized. Pollock pinpoints that even those who were beneficial to Canada were cast aside because they were non-white. The paper adopts two principles of Critical Race Theory to further detect the use of Institutionalized Racism in the plays. Sharon Pollock tackled controversial Canadian history of oppression and segregation against minorities, such as the native people and the Sikh community. The Komagata Maru incident examines Canadian and East-Indian immigration policy under the Umbrella of the British Empire.

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