Interpellating Hyphenated Medusas: Pearl Cleage's Chain and Rhodessa Jones' Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women

Here they are, returning, arriving over and again, because the unconscious is impregnable. They have wandered around in circles, confined to the narrow room in which they've been given a deadly brainwashing. You can incarcerate them, slow them down, get away with the old Apartheid routine, but for a time only. As so as they begin to speak, at the same time as they're taught their name, they can be caught that their territory is black. Mad. Pearl Cleage 1 and Rhodessa Jones 2 in their plays Chain (1991) and Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women (1990), respectively, press against the externally and internally imposed boundaries confining the African American feminine expression. Theirs is a concurrent issue which gives a collective redefinition of sisterhood; they do not only seek helping black females, but also any female to transcend the downgrading destructive oculocentric, patriarchal ideologies deadening females’ spirit and capability of choice. Coinciding with Louis Althusser’s quest of the way ideology functions in society, the article attempts to explore the metaphorised representation of females through an Angel/Mad binary as well as to examine the prejudiced Freudian psychosexual interpretation of females created by patriarchal Ideological State Apparatus in the context of the Althusserian concept of interpellation.

the patriarchal ISA that instructs them how to communicate and respond to life challenges.
'Communication is a process in which humans produce and reproduce social relations in manners that mediate not just understanding the world and other humans, but also the dialectic of structure and agency and the dialectic of society's realms' (Fuchs 2019). Thus, females hold the patriarchal ISA ideologies as true because its existence materialises to the extent that it incarcerates females into the Angel/Mad metaphor; 'an ideology always exists in apparatus, and its practice, or practices' (Althusser, "Lenin before Hegel" 1969, p. 112).
Accordingly, a female under the patriarchal ISA communicates with the society in a way that is specially pre-determined for females.
Pearl Cleage is an African American author of fiction and non-fiction. She decided to write about the issues and problems of people she encounters. Her interesting and vivant plays are mainly designed to educate the audience how to overcome everyday life challenges.
However, she believes that her plays should be interesting enough to entice the audience to absorb her message. In an interview with Morgan Mims, Pearl Cleage confirms: Part of my job, I think, is to make my stories so interesting and my characters so real and so vibrant that the issues are indistinguishable from the lives I am presenting for your consideration. Nobody comes to the theatre to be preached about issues. I think most people want to feel something at the theatre (Mims 2016).
Cleage's realistic dramas also spotlight the difficulties that youth confront while growing up. She believes that it is not easy to deal with the world outside the boundary of the family. She went through this issue with her sixteen-year daughter, whose problems are compared to many other teenagers at her same age bracket. Their teenage confrontation with the outer society might develop complications that would easily destroy their future. In a International Journal Online of Humanities (IJOHMN) ISSN: 2395-5155 Volume 6, Issue 3, June 2020 www.ijohmn.com 5 recent interview, Cleage confirms that she tackles the responsibility of representing on stage stories of females 'trying to deal with all the outside world' so as to give the audience the opportunity to compare whatever the behold on stage with their own personal issues so that they would 'see the rough edges and see that even though life is messy and the journey is always messy, that you can keep moving forward and figure it out' (Martin 2014). Cleage aspires to better her society.
Considering Rhodessa Jones, she is a San Francisco actress, teacher, singer, and writer as well as a co-artistic director of the San Francisco-based theater company Cultural Odyssey and the founding director of the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women.
Jones thinks of all her work as 'telling the truth and practicing revolution' (Janiak 2018). Her revolutionary perspective started when she was asked to teach aerobics to imprisoned women. Listening to the stories of the incarcerated females, she realised that their stories deserve to be told. Those stories helped Jones generate an autobiographical theatre depending upon storytelling, an art that she learned from 'her grandmother and her aunts'. Rhodessa Jones believes that 'the art of autobiographical theater and storytelling [would] support the most vulnerable people to heal collectively' ("Rhodessa Jones" 2020). Her plays are real therapeutic pieces that would exhort and educate by bringing on stage real experiences of females that the audience encounter in their everyday lives.
Chain (1991) and Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women (1990) deal with marginalised females who constitute the wide majority of the African American society. Most of them are underclass females: drug addicts, whores and criminals; 'women who are intentionally silenced and ostracized by the systems of power in this country, women in prison' (Elam 1996, p. 9). Yet, these females, like any other ones, are metonymically incarcerated within the patriarchal ISA that always forces them to be incarcerated in the position of a dependent follower. Within the outer prison of the phallocentric society, the presence/absence International Journal Online of Humanities (IJOHMN) ISSN: 2395-5155 Volume 6, Issue 3, June 2020 www.ijohmn.com 6 of males is fatal; it deracinates the feminine ideology, and, further, frames femininity to their own ideal image. Patriarchal thought has created an incoherent version of femininity, in which the women who live it are trapped, and for which they are blamed. Their 'nature' is culturally constructed, but the construction is disguisedand, after all, nature is precisely the thing that one cannot change. (Robins 2000, p. 59) Mishandled as they are by the patriarchal ISA, females are trapped in a dominance/submissiveness scheme whose diligent followers are rewarded by being dubbed 'Angels,' while the dissenters are called 'Mad.' The patriarchal urban culture defines the 'Angel in the House' as a perfect lady who is 'contently submissive to men, but strong in her inner purity and religiosity, queen in her own realm of the Home' (Showalter 1981, p. 274). 5 The patriarchal ISA poking the like definitions interpellates the subjecthood of females. Knowing that ideology, as Althusser defines it, is 'the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence,' and, moreover, it serves as a 'mediator' between the system of power and individuals (Althusser, 1969, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus,' p. 162), the duality of domination/subjugation which gives way to dominance/submissiveness is raised. Althusser's example of a police officer who shouts out 'Hey, you there!' in public is applicable upon the status of females who are incarcerated in the metaphorised Angel/Mad representation promulgated by the patriarchal ISA. Althusser proceeds, upon hearing this exclamation, an individual turns around and 'by this mere onehundred-and-eighty degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject' (Althusser, 1969, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus,' p. 174). Althusser here complicates the process of domination/subjugation when he pinpoints the interpellation process where individuals recognise themselves as subject. His example reveals that recognition of subjecthood is a double-faced process in which an individual feels that law gives him/her the right to be subject, but, at the same time, he/she are subjugated by the law. Accordingly, Althusser thinks that through ideology, the hegemonic power is capable of reproducing itself through 'obscuring' traditional forms of repression and 'incorporating the individuals into the power structure' (Althusser, 1969, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus,' p. 162 to the duality of dominance/submissiveness, but also to that of exploitation/victimisation because she, unconsciously, reproduces the patriarchal hegemonic power. Both dualities are abhorred by females who are keen to develop self-esteem and high self-image. Rosa's mother belongs to the submissive type of Angels. She is stamped with the duality of exploitation/victimisation that metamorphoses into a 'happy house wife syndrome' that moulds her, certainly, from a patriarchal perspective, into 'the ideal image of womanhood' (Devine 1992, p. 74). She is subject to a complex victimisation process in which she is deprived of feminine expression. Rosa's mother, blindly, follows her husband when he takes her away from the rural den of Tuskegee to the inferno of the Harlem ghetto where she is transformed into a worn out Angel working from early hours of the day until late at night. He also deprives her of the expression of her motherhood when he assumes her role International Journal Online of Humanities (IJOHMN) ISSN: 2395-5155 Volume 6, Issue 3, June 2020 www.ijohmn.com 9 as mother; he undertakes the task of nursing and reforming Rosa and, above all, occupying her daydreams. The day they retrieve Rosa, her mother keeps crying and does not utter a word. She never objects when her husband chains Rosa; 'she looked at me and then she grabbed her purse and ran out of the room. Then it was just me and Daddy,' says Rosa (Chain 1991, p. 273). In the shade of the all-normative and all-encompassing patriarchal culture, Rosa's mother becomes an excruciatingly weak, submissive and negative Angel who is able to help nobody; including herself. Rosa's mother is the product of the patriarchal ISA which interpellates females and calls them Angels when they become totally submissive to the extent that they adopt whatever ideologies passed to them by the patriarchal ISA; no matter if they were destructive. At this point, as Keith Sawyer believes, they reach 'the moment and process of recognition of interaction with the ideology' (Sawyer 2002, p. 438).
Such an interaction turns Rosa's mother, so as her likes, into a mere effect of social relations; a process that jeopardises her subjecthood.
Jesus' mother, the Puerto Rican Third World female, represents another type of Angels; namely, the masochistic. She shoulders the harsh task of assuming a mother-father figure; to her son, she is the mother and the breadwinner. She plays the same role with her boyfriend and, also, accepts all his violence and abuse under the pretext that she reforms him.
At the end, he relentlessly murders her, as he believes that the dope is far better than her sacrifices which might strip him of his authority and declare her victorious autonomous female. 'As is so frequently the case in the history of sex relations, men view the smallest female steps towards autonomy as threatening strides that will strip them of all authority' (Gilbert 1988, p. 66). Males are content with the victimisation of females because this guarantees a perpetual hegemony. women,' whereas feminism 'insists that though women are undoubtedly female, this is in no way guarantees that they will be feminine' (Moi 1985, p. 65). This refers to the fact that femininity and autonomous feminine ideology are claimed not gained.
Considering that the wide majority of individuals, i.e. subjects, accept their ideological self-constitution as 'reality' or 'nature', the same way that females do, as they become unconscious to the repressive State Apparatus (SA) which is designed to punish whoever dares to reject the dominant ideology that produces a common status of submission/victimisation; as for the ISA, it paves the way to hegemonic power structure that maintains the control of the SA. Althusser argues that 'the individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the subject, i.e., in order that he shall accept his subjugation; in order that he shall make the gestures and actions of his subjugation 'all by himself'' (Althusser 1969, 'Lenin before Hegel,' p. 123). Rosa's grandmother, Rosa's mother, Jesus' mother and Paula freely submit to the created patriarchal culture that subjugates females. Each one of them ends as a slave to such repressive SA and ISA because they had to choose to be incarcerated into the binary of exploitation/victimisation so as to be recognised as Angels.
The I look out at all those faces. There's my mother's face, my sister's face, and my daughter's face. And I'm wondering how in the hell did they get here in the first place. And I realize that it is but for a flip of fate that it could be me in here and she out there. (BBG 1990, p. 367) From a patriarchal ISA, Jones' attitude is that of a Mad female, yet, she enjoys self-control to the extent that she usefully employs her madness to assert herself, gain her rights, and challenge the patriarchal hegemony. In her essay, 'The Mad Woman and her Languages,' Nina Baym asserts 'French feminist literary theory appears to accept the figure of the mad woman as redemptive' (Baym 1984, p. 157). Thus, being Mad is not that repulsive because it might help give rise to a revolutionary spirit fighting imposed culture; it seems that Jones applies the same strategy.
While the constitutive process of ideology is a matter of interpellation, there is a contradictory trend of personal ideologies that interpellates Rosa, Rohodessa Jones and the inmates. Such personal ideologies are the force that prods women to express their subjecthood shamelessly. Personal ideologies also encourage them to escape boundaries of subjecthood that is a mere effect of social relations, no matter if these women were marked Mad. Accordingly, the hegemony of the patriarchal ISA that involves submission and repression and essentially caters for the objectives of the SA becomes threatened by another revolutionary one initiated by outcast Mad females. Due to the category of Mad females, the hegemonic interpellation heralded by the patriarchy remarkably fails as the patriarchy does not take into account the psychological status of a Mad female, in other words their 'Third Text', which has the power to combat any process of submission/subjugation or exploitation/victimisation.
The subject deconstructs every message even if he is not trained in critical practice.
He is interpellated or fails to be interpellated depending on what latent message was generated through a comparison with a Third Text. And because the Third Text includes All possible Texts, the subject is given to numerous competing interpellations offered by many ideologies at odds with each other. The subject is in an environment of competing interpellations. (Vaknin 2005, p. 28) These 'competing interpellations' also produce competing ideologies according to which the constitutive process of ideology interpellates both categories; namely, the Angel and the Mad, making of them two competing polarities. When placed in a social context, these two competing polarities promulgate a set of ideologies; notably, each one of them struggles to create its own hegemonic power structure.
Under the patriarchal SA, the females in Rhodessa Jones' Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women are isolated from the outer world by being literally incarcerated as punishment for acting madly. Those females are the victims of oscillating between their matrilineage and patrilineage in an arduous process of self-definition. Similar to all the Angels in Chain, they are battered under the duality of dominance/submissiveness.
Through the Roman Catholic Church, patriarchal authority by the Middle Ages had defined and promoted roles for women, they could most easily be controlled by physically and socially, namely, the virgin, the mother, and the whore. (Devine 1992, p. 11) The prison walls enfold these same three categories; 'the virgin, the mother, and the whore'; though the first two refer to the Angel, while the last one to the Mad.  (BBG 1990, p. 368). Compared to any Angel, she is a mother who is heartbroken because her baby is away from her. In violation of the patriarchal taboos, the incarcerated females expose the falsity and the prejudice of the patriarchal ISA. Physically incarcerated as they are, 'women themselves have constituted a subculture within the framework of a larger society and have been unified by values, conventions, experiences, and behaviors impinging on each individual' (Showalter 1981, p. 373). In this subculture, or cultural enclave, these females provoke their social and behavioral paradigms so as to reach a proper self-expression according to the following arrangement: 'Feminine, Feminist, and Female' (Showalter 1981, p. 374).
The wide majority of the incarcerated women successfully discover their identity away from the patriarchal urban culture. In incarceration, the inmates freely express themselves and perform their everyday activities; such as watching TV and reacting towards soap operas; as if they were enjoying a free life away from the prison walls. Rosa also gets used to her chains and adapts herself to move easily with them as if they were not there. Chain and Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women do not just reflect or 'mirror' a society; they attempted to change it' (Carby 1995, p. 95) by teaching females that any type of madness, which is synonymous to assertiveness and independence, undoubtedly, leads to freedom and autonomous subjecthood. These Mad females succeed at creating of themselves a competing hegemonic polarity, which has a power structure that competes with the patriarchal one. Through their ideologies that are deemed madness, the literally or figuratively incarcerated females become representatives 'of power over other human beings' which underlines the fact that 'the failure of one interpellationnormally means the success of another' (Vaknin 2005, p. 29). The incarcerated Mad females constitute a competing culture when they insist upon rejecting predetermined behaviour patterns.
Being Angel or Mad, a female is also a human being who, compared to any female, has an id and ego that impel her to develop her ability to live within a social environment.
They also pass through the same Freudian stages of a child's psychosexual development 7 . Regretfully, Freud leads sexist prejudiced attitude against women motivated by a cross-cultural singular notion of patriarchy that spreads a homogenous notion that asserts the inferiority of females so as their otherness 8 . The metaphorised representation of women and Freud's psychosexual analysis are a matter of culture industry through which certain ideologies are coined to interpellate a certain category; noting that in the process of culture industry, the details of an ideology change according to the situation. Determined to be defined as Angels, when females hoard the patriarchal culture industry promoted by a hegemonic ISA, they help perpetuate not only the patriarchal hegemonic power, but also their inferior status. All the types of females 'immovably, […] insist on the very ideology, which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities' (Horkheimer 1979, p. 8). When females consent to the ideologies interpellating them as passive, they do not only agree on their inferiority but also grow satisfied with it. games that are essentially educative. Rhodessa Jones' nephew echoes this fact in his letter to her when he says: 'This place [prison] can really be a great place to get your mind together.
Even the violence and games that people play help you learn and grow' (BBG 1990, p. 377 promoting the strategy of separate development. During incarceration, which is compared to the latency stage, the imprisoned females begin regressing to self-centered periods of stimulation and gratification until they stop at the phallic stage; the stage of character formation. In this stage, they are safe and away from discriminating gender-roles, sexual assault and myths, and, clearly, start thinking about their attitude; not only of the physical imprisonment, but also of the devastating psychological incarceration. Following Freud's psychosexual theory, Rosa by the close of her phallic stage starts a process of affection transference through making relationships with the other sex so as to grow up; because a 'woman's place in human social life is not in any direct sense a product of the things she does (or even less, a function of what biology she is) but the meaning her activities acquire through concrete social transactions' (Rosaldo 1980, p. 400). Rosa finds that her father is the appropriate figure, instead of, according to Freud, her castrated mother.
Her immense love towards her father is based upon his qualities: cool nerves, strength, readiness to fight and the difficulty to get him impassioned. Nonetheless, the hectic city life separates them and renders him unable to back her and to consider her love for him. As a consequence, Rosa begins transferring her passion to another male figure enjoying her father's same qualities; namely, Jesus, whose name suggests that he is a saviour. Freud asserts: Girls remain in it [the Oedipal stage] for an indeterminate length of time; they demolish it late, and even, so, incompletely. In these circumstances the formation of the super-ego must suffer; it cannot attain the strength and independence which give it its cultural significance. (Freud 1993, p. 88) In contradiction to Freud's psychosexual theory, Rosa becomes affiliated to her father then to Jesus because they are strong, and accepted to develop a relationship with her. On the other hand, her relationship with her mother is not that strong, not because of Freud's anxiety it is revealed that he is a prisoner of the Oedipal stage. To him, the violent death of his angelic mother is equivalent to the discovery that his mother is castrated. Developing resemblance to the nearest male figure, the ready example is his mother's boyfriend who is a murderer, drug addict, bully, cool and self-centered. Nevertheless, Jesus' rejection of his phallic mother is not built upon the discovery of her, as Nina Baym (1984, p. 163) believes, 'appalling lack', but, similar to Rosa, upon the discovery that the real world has no place for invisible angels. The mask of his mother's boyfriend is also appropriate because it asserts that he has surpassed the Oedipal stage and become adult. Yet, deep inside, he knows that has not.
His Oedipus complex is insurmountable; he confides to Rosa that 'he used to hear his mother and father fucking when he was real little and sometimes he'd pretend that his mother was doin' it with him instead of his father' (BBG 1990, p. 283). As a result, his love life becomes traumatic to the extent that he recoils from any real sexual relationship with any female on basis that he cannot do it with his mother. He also encourages Rosa, if she likes, 'to do it with somebody else, he wouldn't be pissed off, or nothing' (BBG 1990, p. 282 obviously, it is the males who do. It appears that Freud analyses the masculine world then ascribes the derogatory connotations that males repudiate to females. Unlike the 'girls,' the boys are interested in developing sexual difference because the core gender identity in boys is more conflictual and more problematic . . . because of their initial close association ('a primary oneness') to the mother figure, boys have as part of their core gender identity 'an underlying sense of femaleness' that continually, usually, unnoticeably, but sometimes insistently challenges and undermines the sense of maleness. (Chodorow 1978, p. 13) Males' psychological dichotomy prods them to ascribe the feelings and the psychological traumas that they are incapable of pronouncing to females in order to retain the coherent image of unprejudiced superior sex.
In Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women, whatever denied outside prison walls is fulfilled inside. Mama Pearl, who cannot assume her role as a mother to her handicapped daughter because of her incarceration, capably plays the role of the phallic mother to the inmates who cherish and respect her. As for Regina Brown and Doris, their male relationships are mature and realistic. Regina's is for money, while Doris' is for having a father to her child; this attitude affirms that they do not suffer from any Castration Complex.
Hélène Cixous gibing at the misogynic and patriarchal immature Freudian analysis of the phallic stage argues: Too bad for [men] if they fall apart upon discovering that women aren't men, or that the mother doesn't have one. But isn't this fear convenient for them? Wouldn't the worse, isn't the worst, in truth, that women aren't castrated? (Cixous 1976, p. 885) The prejudiced interpretation of the phallic stage produces psychological deformity that tightens the incarceration of females. Freud's psychosexual analysis of female psychology asserts a prejudiced patriarchal ISA which intends to incarcerate females into pre-determined roles. Freud's prejudiced theories are passed as real and true ideologies  (Vaknin 2005, p. 27). Remarkably, a wide range of females accept such ideologies and conceive them never 'erring' to the extent that they pass them as real and true.
Cinderella Complex 9 or the myth of the knight protector is the natural extension to the phallic stage that 'entails a relational complexity in feminine self-definition or personality' (Chodorow 1978, p. 93 simply, he is too coward to confront the reality or to take a positive action. Thus, the disillusioned Rosa discovers that her real hero and prince charming is her father towards whom she hoards a great affection on a quasi-Electra Complex fashion. It is her father who rescues her from the dope addicts who are ready to murder anybody for a minor reason. Similar to any Cinderella, Rosa desires to 'be part of somebody else' and 'to get into the driver's seat' of 'the man's world' (Dowling 1981, p. 2, 54). Under male authority, however, she will never do; the patriarchal ISA will ever thwart that desired type of authoritative subjecthood.
On the other hand, the majority of the inmates, in Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women, are disillusioned Cinderellas. It seems that Regina Brown has suffered when she has been an innocent Cinderella. Before and after her imprisonment, she asserts that she is the sole controller and protector of herself. She, shamelessly, declares that she is a prostitute; as if announcing that she will not be any more deceived by the male world. She always repeats, 'I am a prostitute, straight up. I decided a long ago, wasn't no man gonna tell me what to do [sic]. I'm a full-grown woman, straight up and down. Or my name ain't Regina Brown' (BBG 1990, p. 368). Regina's complete independence is, probably, the reason behind murdering her. Indeed, a black woman's struggle for sexual autonomy is similar to 'a struggle against fearful and overwhelming odds, which often ended in a horrible death' (Cooper 1991, p. 711). As for Mama Pearl, she hates corrupt males who deceive the inexperienced and naïve females; namely, 'the big butt girls,' as they are called in the play, for the sake of prostituting them or selling them the dope. It is also painful for Mama Pearl to see these females end up pregnant; yet, more painful is to behold the babies of these lost Cinderellas deposited to child protective services or 'flush [ed] . . . down the toilet than grunt them into the world' (BBG 1990, p. 370 Cinderella who is loved and protected by the male world. However, she loses all the day she breaks her leg; her career as a ballerina ends so as her father's love. She is destroyed by her father who is prince charming when expels her out of the house after discovering that she is an addict. Another Cinderella is Doris who clinches to an ex-con, Big Willie, so as to protect her and her baby. Yet, the reverse happens; she is sent to prison because it is she who defends him and her baby against the assault of a policeman. However, she still believes in her boyfriend.
Cinderella Complex is the short cut to masochism. In spite of the inner strength of the females in Chain and Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women, they are subject to processes of conquering and domination; they need to act like a Cinderella, including those women who could develop self-esteem. In fact, this is conceived as a psychological desire for rape in which a woman plays the role of the passive recipient who is conquered and dominated.
Molly Haskell confirms that she has discovered that 'particularly those women who have self-esteem, who are independent and sexually active have the fantasies in which rape plays a part,' however, 'none of these women would give up' (Haskell 1987, p. 11). These fantasies are the essence of the masochism of women which is 'mostly just adaptation to unsatisfying and limiting circumstances' (Thompson 1964, p. 133). Masochism has ever been conceived the bait that makes women think that they are more attractive to men. 'Some of us,' says David Gerrold, 'has learned that we can succeed and survive at a higher level if we express our paranoia in a way that makes us attractive to the people we want to be attractive to' (Gerrold 1988, p. 28-29). Accordingly, females' masochism is typical to such paranoia.
Rosa's mother, grandmother, Paula and Jesus' mother willingly yield to this psychological rape; exactly, masochism, so as to keep themselves attractive to their male partners. The result is that they lose their self-esteem and whatever gifts and assets they possess; including the expression of femininity. Playing the role of a silent partner, Rosa's mother loses her attractiveness to her daughter, as well as, her male partner who overworks her like a man.
Similar to her is Jesus' mother who endures beatings, bad behaviour and an addict prince charming of a boyfriend in an attempt to reform him with her masochistic attractiveness.
Against her expectations, however, her masochism precipitates her death. Compared to her is Paula whose attractiveness and beauty are the bait that is conducive to her destruction. She becomes a pregnant semi-prostitute who satisfies the 'male ideology of assault (the mass psychology of the conqueror)' when 'viewing females as anonymous, panting playthings, adult toys, dehumanized objects to be used, abused, broken and discarded' (Brownmiller 1975, p. 394). Her developed sort of attractiveness makes her meet the end of an anonymous disposable object.
Rosa and Regina Brown suffer from a semi-identical sort of prostitution at the hands of male aggressors with killer instinct to the extent that they, consciously, love the pains of abuse. Though Regina is not lesbian, she lets the lesbian inmates couple with her because she believes that: 'Everybody and anybody will use you so you best get to using first' (BBG 1990, p. 388). Rosa also realises that Jesus uses her; he rejects coupling with her but teaches her to publicly masturbate in front of other males so as to procure money. His magical word that makes her blindly obey him is calling her by her Christian name, 'Rosa.' Her name is the only force providing her with self-assertiveness and keeping her high self-image; in a word, it saves her from the danger of being 'anonymous' 'plaything'. Rosa gets used to such practice that Jesus, for his benefit, euphemises when he calls it a game. She also deems of it an appropriate expedience that may help her escape the grip of dope addicts.
If her father did not bust in at the right moment, she would have lost her virginity and easily, slipped into prostitution. The masochism of these women is the testimony of society-created neuroses. This is in contradiction to the common false belief based upon real scientific facts that takes of 'menstruation, defloration, rape, birth, the nature of heterosexual encounters and lack of muscles seem to indicate that the female was built to submit, to endure physical pain' (Horney 1967, p. 78). On the other hand, Lena Sorrentina, in spite of her strong muscular built and former self-assertiveness, cannot endure the pain of lack of self-esteem. The dope is her way to overcome the agony of low self-image, as it is the only means that helps her dance. Yet, the effectiveness of the dope lasts for short period. Thus, she had to be submissive when she chooses to embrace it until she loses her subjecthood, distinguished social position and, finally, sane mental faculty. Lena Sorrentina's masochism is not the result of woman biology but psychological vulnerability. She is compared to Jesus and the boyfriend of Jesus' mother whose inability to cope with the reality urge them to be servile to the devastating power of the dope. Submitting to the repressive patriarchal hegemonic ISA turns a female into a mere object whenever she attempts to gain distinguished subjecthood through performance and relations to the others and the social institutions. In confirmation, Vaknin argues: People relate to the condition of existence through the practice of ideology.
Contradictions are smoothed over and (real) problems are offered false (though seemingly true) solutions. Thus, ideology has a realistic dimensionand a dimension of representations (myths, concepts, ideas, images). There is (harsh, conflicting) reality-and the way that we represent it both to ourselves and to others. (Vaknin 2005, p. 30) These females have unconsciously turned themselves into objects in an attempt to be attractive so as to 'relate to the condition of existence' as a gateway to attain subjecthood. the feminist discourse to lag behind major socio-political issues. Therefore, 'it is important to isolate the problems which are specific to Africa or perhaps the Third World in general' (Petersen 1984, p. 251 (Mohanty 1984, p. 260). In this sense, the interpellation of females in Third World countries or realms; including the African American, is very complex. The fundamental problem of Rosa is that she hoards the ambivalence of two contrasted realms that are enfolded within the boundaries of the same country. An African-American woman is not much different from her sisters in Africa or the Third World.
Nonetheless, Rosa aspires to break through so as to gain control over her body and sexuality, and the freedom to make her own decisions the same way that any white European woman does. These notions lead her to create a 'Third Text' of her own through which she is interpellated. At first, she tends to Jesus deeming that he belongs to a better civilisation due to  (BBG 1990, p. 366), that is repeated all over the play, she teaches the marginalised women how to control their fate and to be capable of generating a double-voice until they assume a unified one whenever they become in contact with the patriarchal ISA and social culture.
Playing not only the role of the aerobic teacher to the inmates, but also that of a psychotherapist, Rhodessa Jones invades the male world and wins their esteem and respect.
She narrates in this live-show, which is based upon true stories, that when she returned back home after playing this piece, the San Francisco's Sheriff's Department Work Furlough Program asks her to perform it in front of seventy men, though she asserts that 'this is a feminist theatre piece.' Soon after, she receives her 'first contact to do a run in San Francisco' (BBG 1990, p. 376). Furthermore, her twenty-five years old nephew sends her a letter from his penitentiary in which he expresses his love and respect and also confides to her his feelings and aspirations. In brief, Jones' struggle pays through assiduous efforts and refusing to give up or work within framework pre-determined by patriarchal ISA. The Althusser confirms, 'in dreadful conditions, attempt to turn few weapons they can find in the history and learning they 'teach' against the ideology, the system and the practices in which they are trapped . . . are a kind of hero' (Althusser, "Lenin before Hegel" 1969, 126 acknowledges herself not as a victim anymore, but as a human being who has a free will and responsibility towards her own choices and life; these are the primary steps to autonomous subjecthood. Furthering her self-development, she consciously leaves with Jesus so as to test her newly acquired strength. Probably, the moment she would know that she totally overcame her traumatic yearning for Jesus as a symbol of powerful street-representative; it would be the same moment when she would leave him. It is also possible that if she reaches an optimal psychological functioning 10 , she will turn into another Rhodessa Jones whose struggle pays. Yet, if she would not cultivate self-balance, she might turn into another Doris who is caught neither for addiction nor for prostitution, but for protecting her family. In her literal incarceration, Rosa, the teenager female, develops a clear understanding of what Althusser (Althusser, 'Ideology' 1969, p. 146) calls 'the unconscious character of ideology' that Vaknin dubs as 'the Third Text' that is inherent in the social practices and the patriarchal ISA.
Similar to Jones, she discovers her subjecthood through clinching to her personal ideology which, finally, offers her not a negative interpellation but a 'competing interpellation.' Expectedly, Rosa's example will also make of her a heroic teacher whose example will be followed by others.
The prejudiced attitude towards females is debunked by analysing the metaphorised representation of females within the context of the Angel/Mad binary from the perspective of Althusser's concept of interpellation. Obviously, such binary is originated in the patriarchal ISA that serves the repressive SA. Passing as true the patriarchal ISA, females hoard it as ultimate truth and become so blinded to observe its false legendary dimension. Unexpectedly, violence and repression enacted against females, so as to perpetuate the hegemony of the dominant power structure, creates an opposing polarity which targets dismantling the false and legendary aspects of female role and position which are created by the hegemonic patriarchal ISA. Cleage's Chain and Jones' Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women appropriate the notions of interpellation through staging true stories that make the reference plays appear as 'a pre-existing structure . . . [that] interpellates the spectator, so constituting him/her as a subject' (Lapslay and Westwake 1988, p. 12). This process of interpellation entails representing a feminist discourse that accentuates the notion of defying society-created neuroses and patriarchal gender-roles, which are accounted as madness by the patriarchal ISA. Nonetheless, they are the gateway for any female to overcome the risk of ghettoising her capabilities, notions and interests. Althusser, SA is repressive and includes the administrative agencies in the state, such as: 'the Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc.' (Althusser, "Preface to Capital Volume One" 1969, p. 96). These agencies function 'by violence' as they impose punishment or privation, at some point, in order to enforce power.
As for the ISA, there are: the religious ISA (including the system of the different public and private schools); the family ISA; the political ISA; the trade union ISA; the communications ISA (press, radio and TV, etc.); the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, etc.); . . . etc. For more information see Althusser, Louis (1971 Dickens, London, 1971, pp. 164-95. 6 Ecofeminism is the relationship between woman and nature. It 'begins with the assumption that from a historical perspective, woman has been associated with nature, and seeks to analyze the development of this association and how it has led to the domination and the exploitation of woman and nature as resources in patriarchal society' (Devine 1992, p. 29). 7 Freud's theory of the psychosexual stages of development proposes that the sexual instincts forming the personality pass through five stages: the oral, the anal, the phallic or the Oedipal, the latency, and the genital.