Earticle

초록

영어

When President Obama made a White House spokesman confirm that he has checked the box that says “Black, African Am., or Negro” in the 2010 census, it signalled that a representative American has declared his racial identity on the basis of a politics of the performative which goes beyond the binary opposition between essentialism and constructivism. In order to examine Obama’s census choice of African American, I come up with a concept of ‘the traversing of race,’ which is borrowed from the theory of fantasy in Lacanian psychoanalysis. I also draw on queer criticism so as to elaborate the concept of ‘the traversing of race’ as a citational performing of one’s ethnic identity. Obama’s ‘traversing of race’ can be compared to the Jewish-American Adam Sandler’s performance of the Chanukah Song series. The hilarious lyrics of Sandler’s Chanukah songs celebrate a Jewish ‘coming-out’ festivity which enables American Jews to overcome their divided subject position between inclusion and distinctiveness. Historically, it is W. E. B. Du Bois’s formula of double-consciousness that is concerned with ‘the traversing of race’ in the earliest politico-ethical context of becoming American and not becoming white. Du Bois’s insight into the future of race in America is helpful in figuring out how mixed-race people should negotiate the politics of identity against the backdrop of multicultural America. Unlike mixed-race characters who can pass for white in the late 19th- and early 20th-century situations, mixed-race characters of what a critic calls “new millenium passing novel” are less or no longer suffering from the identity crisis related to neurosis, depression, or schizophrenia, even though a subtle racism is not over. Seen from this post-racial perspective, new millenium mixed-race people are not necessarily afraid of traversing race. With the overall trope of performativity, Barack Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, successfully signifies the way in which a mixed-race American confirms his ever-ongoing identity.

목차

I. 들어가며 : 버락 오바마의 '인종 가로지르기'
 II. ‘인종 가로지르기’의 다른 한 예 : 미국유태인의 경우
 III. 두보이스의 ‘인종 가로지르기'
 IV. 패싱의 '인종 가로지르기'
 V. 나가면서 : 새천년 혼혈의  ‘인종 가로지르기’
 인용문헌
 Abstract

키워드

저자

• 김준년 [ Junyon Kim | 홍익대학교 ]

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