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Abstract This dissertation attempts to introduce a cross-cultural reading of three plays by investigating how the use of food in Bertolt Brecht’s Saint Joan of the Stockyards (1932), Tawfiq Al-Hakim’s Food for Every Mouth (1963), and Suzan-Lori Parks’Venus (1990) exposes subalternity in three different societies which had suffered from the legacy of European colonialism. Drawing on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” this dissertation explores how colonialism, cultural imperialism, and cultural hegemony muted the voices of the subalterns in the selected plays. Through the study of how food and power unravel the greedy capitalism in Saint Joan of the Stockyards, hunger in Food for Every Mouth, and racism in Venus, the voices of these subalterns can be heard. It also foregrounds food as a crucial cultural element that conveys the traditions and customs and as a powerful lens on labor and capitalism. Furthermore, the dissertation examines drama techniques in the plays under question. It concludes that cultural studies of food can provide a solution to the world problems such as social injustice, hunger and racism and that women are the most vulnerable subalterns who are deeply in men’s shadow. In addition, the dissertation concludes that the interplay between food and power represents the voice of the subalterns against the practices of power and urges social reform through the numerous theatrical techniques in the plays under question. |