레비나스의 타자철학을 통한 『맥베스』는 “여성 부재의 남성만의 나라”라는 비판에 대한 재고찰

Abstract

Some patriarchal critics contend that Macbeth contains clear contempts for feminine values. The childlessness of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is clearly contrasted with procreative images of babies, children, and the milk of the female breast. No compassion, hospitality and nurturing of otherness are in their world. Even some feminine critics argue that this play ends by consolidating patriarchal masculinity totally eliminating the feminine. This paper, however, refutes the argument that the patriarchal masculinity thoroughly marginalizes and erases the vestige of femininity and maternity in this play. I will touch on logical controversies raised by some patriarchal and feminine critics and reread the text of this play in view of Levinasian philosophy of otherness, for Levinas’s notions of conatus; femininity and motherhood are very useful to analyze the dichotomy of the two worlds: patriarchal masculinity and feminine gentleness. Levinas defines conatus as man’s self-centering desire trying to forget and eradicate the other. Macbeth plunges into conatus to murder the king Duncan and divest him of the crown. Driven by conatus, he thoroughly drains even one drop of femininity and maternity in his nature. Macbeth’s world of conatus is clearly contrasted with Duncan’s world in which masculinity and femininity coexist. In the end of this play, Macbeth’s conatus is destroyed by the harmonious world in which masculinity and femininity coexist without one dominated by the other. The procreative motherhood restored back by Malcolm and Macduff displaces Macbeth's barren masculinity and inseminates the sweet milk of concord into the land of wilderness, Scotland.