Sam Shepard - Between the Margin and the Centre - Curse of the Starving Class and the Logic of Destruction

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Quinn

Scholarly analysis of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class examines how its formal structure and linguistic texture enact the same self-destructive struggle dramatized through the play’s concluding images. Focusing on Shepard’s stage directions as “performance text,” the paper proposes a psychoanalytic reading drawing on Lacan and Kristeva: a hunger for wholeness and stability, tied to “phallic” identity, is repeatedly undermined by destruction, division, deferral, and abjection. The study also argues that this destructive logic repeatedly releases eruptions of poetic language that threaten to reconstitute the play as forces outside the symbolic order, on the edge of the real.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages106

Reading Time2 h 43 min

AccessFree to download

Contents

Curse of the Starving Class and the Logic of Destruction

William E. Kleb

American Clocks: Sam Shepard’s Time Plays

Enoch Brater

Sam Shepard, Feminist Playwright: The Destination of A Lie of the 27 Mind

Carol Rosen

Shamanism Vilified and Redeemed: Sam Shepard’s States of Shock

Alfred Nordmann and Hartmut Wickert

Indian Country: Sam Shepard and the Cultural Other

David J. DeRose

Hidden in Plain Sight: 25 Notes on Shepard’s Stage Silence and Screen Presence, 1984–1993

Don Shewey

Notes on Contributors

Index

SAM SHEPARD BETWEEN THE MARGIN AND THE CENTRE (2) In memory of my father (1924–1996) Contents Curse of the Starving Class and the Logic of Destruction 1 William E.Kleb American Clocks: Sam Shepard’s Time Plays 17 Enoch Brater Sam Shepard, Feminist Playwright: The Destination of A Lie of the 27 Mind Carol Rosen Shamanism Vilified and Redeemed: Sam Shepard’s States of Shock 39 Alfred Nordmann and Hartmut Wickert Indian Country: Sam Shepard and the Cultural Other 53 David J.DeRose Hidden in Plain Sight: 25 Notes on Shepard’s Stage Silence and 71 Screen Presence, 1984–1993 Don Shewey Notes on Contributors 85 Index 95 For the Contents of Sam Shepard: Between the Margin and the Centre (1), Volume 8 Part 3, please see back of this issue. iv Curse of the Starving Class and the Logic of Destruction William E.Kleb This paper looks closely at the formal structure and linguistic texture of Curse of the Starving Class, attempting to demonstrate that the text itself is engaged in the same (self-destructive) struggle expressed at the end by the figure of the eagle and the cat. The analysis, focusing on Shepard’s stage directions (“the performance text”), suggests a “psychoanalytic” reading based on key concepts from Lacan and Kristeva: The hunger (desire) for wholeness, stability, “phallic” identity which drives the work forward (at the level of “realism”) is continually challenged, and finally defeated by structural tropes of destruction, division, deferral, and abjection (at the level of action and metaphor) . However, this internal logic of destruction releases again and again an eruption of poetic language (verbal and non-verbal) which finally threatens to reconstitute Curse as a play of“semiotic” forces, situated outside the symbolic order, on the edge of the real. KEY WORDS: Abjection (Kristeva), Father (failed), Performance art, Real Performance text (Lacan), Stage directions (as countertext), Symbolic Order (Lacan) . When Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class was originally produced, first in London (1977) and then in New York (1978), it was received by some reviewers as an anomaly—America’s foremost experimental playwright had written a realistic play about a dysfunctional family living on the edge of poverty in Southern California. At the time, realism was having a major revival in the arts in America, and a number of playwrights (David Mamet and Lanford Wilson chief among them) were engaged in revitalizing the form which had been central to the development of serious American drama since the 1920s. Also, it was obvious that Shepard was not totally abandoning his non-realist roots: reviewers noted that Curse was filled with startling visual images and abrupt transformations (in tone and character)—features of the Shepard style from the 2 WILLIAM E.KLEB beginning. Nevertheless, despite its predictable idiosyncracies, Shepard’s new play struck some at least as a reversion—a turn (however tenuous) to the dramatic traditions (and values) of the past—as much as a reinvention of those traditions. In the 1960s and 1970s, the predominant influences on Shepard’s plays were generally located in popular culture—music (rock and roll, then jazz), beat poetry, pop art, comics, movies; now critics began to point to O’Neill, Miller, Odets, Caldwell, Steinbeck, and, of course, to what seemed to be the major (albeit non-American) source, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.1 Perhaps this evocation of a realist patrimony was simply a reflection of the “neoconservative” spirit of the time—post-bicentennial, and on the verge of a sharp ideological swing to the right. In any case, the validity of this lineage seemed tobe confirmed by Shepard’s subsequent work. Today, Curse of the Starving Class is generally written about as the first of a major sequence of five “realistic” plays, addressing, as Robert Coe puts it,“the traditional theme of American drama, the theme of O’Neill and Miller’s greatest work: th

FAQs

What method does the paper use to read Curse of the Starving Class?

It analyzes the play’s formal structure and linguistic texture, with particular attention to Shepard’s stage directions as the “performance text,” proposing a psychoanalytic approach drawing on Lacan and Kristeva.

Which concepts does the paper connect to the play’s internal logic of destruction?

It links the hunger for wholeness and stability, including “phallic” identity, to the play’s forward movement, then shows how destruction, division, deferral, and abjection defeat that drive.

How does the paper characterize the role of poetic language in the play?

It argues that even as destruction dominates the internal logic, poetic language repeatedly erupts and ultimately threatens to reconstitute the play as a set of “semiotic” forces outside the symbolic order, near the real.

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Quinn