미국 문화정치 지형과 흑백 관계 ―『아미스타드』,『베니토 세레노』,『영웅 노예』를 중심으로

Abstract

Cultural Politics and the Black-White Relationship in America: Amistad, Benito Cereno, and The Heroic SlaveBae, Yoon-GiThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the complex and multi-layered problems around the Black-White relationship in the U.S by examining the three texts that depict slave mutinies aboard connected to the international surroundings of antebellum America. The differences between each gaze from their positions and the divergent social signification provide an epitome that portrays the relationship regarding political power.Amistad, a movie directed by Steven Spielberg, comes to an effect which exposes the old way of covering, absorbing, and annexing relationship by the white supremacy. The way of ontological definition and relationship has inspired the present cultural politics related to the racial discrimination in America. Benito Cereno, a novella by Herman Melville, genetically makes a search for a basic world view of the yankee who have been legitimating their power of controlling and regulating the world in the name of “justice.” The end of Melville’s text catches the catastrophic vision of the future world order led by the yankees. But both of the texts make the thought and voice of the black tabula rasa and mute as many texts by the white do. The Heroic Slave, a novella by Frederick Douglass not only discharges the thought and voice of the white’s “chattel” through gaps of the great dam of American ideal with a steadfast form, but also suggests a solidarity beyond the color-line that both the black and white have to break through in a sovereign individual attitude. While Amistad and Benito Cereno eventually reflect the objective cultural and political environment in America, The Heroic Slave appropriately hits the required burgeoning page of the black literary history through the exploration of a new way of building a human relationship.