Genus Envy: Nationalities, Identities, and the Performing Body of ...

Chapter 1

Radicalizing the Discourse of American Drama

Eugene O’Neill, The Greatest
Un-American Playwright

O’Neill is the canonical colossus of American drama. Nevertheless, most critics have fixed their gaze on his feet of clay: the shame-filled and tragic autobiography upon which his plays are allegedly based. We would do better to grapple with the paradox he offers of an expansive dramaturgy tied to a contractive ideology. Looking beyond the playwright, the fixation on O’Neill’s life is a problem for the study of American drama as a whole. Even scholars who are dissatisfied with O’Neill’s “essentialness” recognize that he frames the narrative of the history of American drama.²⁶ What is more, the playwright’s final plays have obscured the major part of his oeuvre, and critics and scholars