Earticle

초록

영어

In House Made of Dawn (1968), N. Scott Momaday experiments with diverse kinds of hybridization to find solutions for the trauma of displaced Native Americans. I underscore that if hybridity does create a dynamic tension of two opposing cultures to exert its transgressive power, it becomes the positive version of cultural hybridism; if not, it turns into the negative version of cultural hybridism. The protagonist Abel belongs to the former, whereas Father Olguin and Tosamah pertain to the latter. Although Father Olguin and Tosamah show the mixing of Christianity and indigenous cultures, they believe in neither of these conflicting cultures with the result of falling into cultural nihilism. Father Olguin attempts to Christianize Native American rituals from the perspective of the colonizer, whereas Kiowa Indian Tosamah tries to Indianize Christian ideas from the standpoint of the colonized. Despite their difference in ways of putting together clashing cultures, however, both of them cannot have confidence in either Christian or Native American cultures. It follows that they lapse into cultural pessimism. Their hybrid strategies do not play effective roles for tackling the traumatic diaspora of displaced Indians in American metropolitan cities. In contrast, Abel displays the positive version of hybridity. For his hybridism forms a dynamic interaction of white-modern individualism and pan-Indian solidarity. Unlike his grandfather Francisco who sticks to Jemez tribalism to be a native in the Walatowa reservation, Abel combines together Jemez and Navajo traditions to pursue cross-tribal alliance in American society. More importantly, he takes advantage of white-modern individualism as shown in the dawn race, one of Jemez traditional ceremonies so as to distance himself from Jemez tribalism. His solitary observation of the ritual without enthusiastic participation in it implicates the personalization of Jemez collective tribalism; yet, he does not abandon the significance of pan-Indian community. Passing through cross-tribal Native American cultures and white-modern individualism, he is eventually capable of mixing together cross-tribal vision and white-modern individualism. While Francisco adheres to Jemez indigenism in Walatowa reservation, Abel ought to confront an era of termination and relocation policies during 1950s when Indians were displaced from their reservations to scatter into metropolitan cities. His hybridism thus reflects socio-economic and political reorganizations of Native American life in modern American society.

목차

I. Introduction
 II. Father Olguin, Tosamah and the Misuse of Cultural Hybridity
 III. Abel's Hybridism : A Fusion of Cross-tribal Indianness and White-Modern Individualism
 IV. Conclusion
 Works Cited
 Abstract

키워드

저자

• Sungbum Lee [ Sangmyung University ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  미국소설 [마크 트웨인 리뷰]

• 간기

  연3회

• pISSN

  1738-5784

• 수록기간

  1991~2020

• 등재여부

  KCI 등재

• 십진분류

  KDC 843 DDC 813