스콧 마마데이의 『태고의 아이』에 나타난 본질주의와 혼종성의 생성적 결합
Neither Essentialism nor Hybridity: The Third Way in Addressing Identity Problem in N. Scott Momaday’s The Ancient Child
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It is generally said that in addressing the problem of identity, Native American writers follow either essentialism or celebration of hybridity. While writers such as Paula Gunn Allen, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, and Leslie Marmon Silko belong to the former tendency, Louise Erdrich and Gerald Vizenor emphasize the hybrid formation of Indian identity. Momaday is believed to have an affinity with the essentialist group because of his effort to restore the tribal imagination associated with nomadic ancestry, but he also focuses on hybridity in creating his Kiowa Indianness influenced by white writers such as William Faulkner, Emily Dickinson, and Oliver La Farge. The Ancient Child, his long-awaited novel after House Made of Dawn, a Pulitzer prize-winning novel which was credited with opening “The Native American Renaissance” in 1969, shows an interesting approach to the problem of identity in Native American literature. Its hero and heroine, Set and Grey, demonstrate both essentialist and hybrid tendencies respectively in pursuing their identity as a boy-bear and a medicine woman. The story ends with Set’s transformation into a bear as described in a Kiowa legend, but the process of a transformation is never-ending like the legend. Set’s identity, therefore, is not fossilized into a certain label representing a certain group, but kept in process, indicating a new approach to identity.
Abstract
It is generally said that in addressing the problem of identity, Native American writers follow either essentialism or celebration of hybridity. While writers such as Paula Gunn Allen, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, and Leslie Marmon Silko belong to the former tendency, Louise Erdrich and Gerald Vizenor emphasize the hybrid formation of Indian identity. Momaday is believed to have an affinity with the essentialist group because of his effort to restore the tribal imagination associated with nomadic ancestry, but he also focuses on hybridity in creating his Kiowa Indianness influenced by white writers such as William Faulkner, Emily Dickinson, and Oliver La Farge. The Ancient Child, his long-awaited novel after House Made of Dawn, a Pulitzer prize-winning novel which was credited with opening “The Native American Renaissance” in 1969, shows an interesting approach to the problem of identity in Native American literature. Its hero and heroine, Set and Grey, demonstrate both essentialist and hybrid tendencies respectively in pursuing their identity as a boy-bear and a medicine woman. The story ends with Set’s transformation into a bear as described in a Kiowa legend, but the process of a transformation is never-ending like the legend. Set’s identity, therefore, is not fossilized into a certain label representing a certain group, but kept in process, indicating a new approach to identity.
참고문헌 (10)
- Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth, "Why I Can’t Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays" (1996), U of Wisconsin P
- Deleuze, Gilles, "Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature" (1986), U of Minnesota P
- Krupat, Arnold, "The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon" (1989), U of California P
- Momaday, N. Scott, "The Ancient Child" (1990), Harper
- Momaday, N. Scott, "Conversations with N" (1997), UP of Mississippi
- Momaday, N. Scott, "The Way to Rainy Mountain" (1969), U of New Mexico P
- Owens, Louis, "Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel" (1994), U of Oklahoma P
- Silko, Leslie Marmon, "Ceremony" (1977), Penguin
- Silko, Leslie Marmon, "Storyteller" (1981), Arcade
- Stevens, Jason W, "Bear, Outlaw and Storyteller: American Frontier Mythology and the Ethnic Subjectivity of N. Scott Momaday", American Literature, 73(3), pp.599~631 (2001)