『교외의 부처』에서의 근대교외와 백인여성 이상화 -영국의 포스트식민 상황

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze the postcolonial conditions of England in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia in two aspects: first, the philistinism both in suburban and national contexts, and second, the black men’s interracial desire in Europe. The second part of this paper will investigate the definitions of “suburbia,” aiming to understand its typical image as a “bourgeois utopia.” Suburbia, that is, the modern suburb was newly formed as a consequence of the explosive growth of the city. The middle class was the predominant population of this new residential area, and thus, suburbia became synonymous with the bourgeois utopia. The bourgeois, who was called a “philistine” by Arnold, is an anathema to the protagonist. His tendency to persistently yet tacitly resist their culture deepens their postcolonial predicament. The Victorian middle class indulged in their unprecedented omnipotence during the Industrial Revolution and imperial culmination, while the modern middle class was left with the debris of that glory with the end of Empire. The postcolonial melancholia summarizes those symptoms of the latter period. To make things worse, a small immigrant‘s son belittles them as philistines. The third part of this paper will focus on the coloured men’s fascination with the European women. An episode about a man of colour in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks will offer a paragon for this case. The white woman represents the white civilization for the non-white man. Therefore, his craving for the white women implies his ambition to be assimilated to the white world. On the other hand, these miscegenous attempts by him symbolize the implicit subversion of racial hierarchy. As a result, it’s not the strangers that are threatened by the metropolitans, but the metropolitans themselves who are threatened by the strangers. The Buddha of Suburbia observes these postcolonial transitions through a small resistant suburban teenager’s keen eyes.