THE ROLE OF THE BODY IN SEARCH OF (LOST) IDENTITY (ARCHETYPE MEDEA – A MONOLOGUE FOR A WOMAN WHO SOMETIMES SPEAKS BY IVANA SAJKO)

This paper is devoted to a detailed analysis of body images, its functions and roles that it plays in the process of searching for identity in the drama Archetype Medea – a Monologue for a Woman Who Sometimes Speaks (2000) by Ivana Sajko. In the current “postmodern climate,” traditional ideas about the human subject — such as the idea of the autonomous and pre-social subject as the source of truth, rationality and identity — have come under heavy pressure. In postmodern discourse the human subject no longer figures as a point from which the universe can be moved. Postmodernism and postdramatic theatre shows us the human subject as a position, as materialized and dynamic construct produced at the intersection of Nature and Culture, in a whole range of discursive practices the meanings of which are a constant site of struggle over power. The attractive literary strategies in Sajko`s play show main directives in the emotional, biological, cultural and social constructions and representations of the embodied female subject that feels, speaks and shows, confirms its tendency towards the (self-)realisation