오거스트 윌슨 극의 문화 헤게모니(Hegemony) 연구 - '블루스'의 저항, 갈등, 타협을 중심으로

Abstract

August Wilson suggested that some major parts of the culture in America originated from Afro-American culture. Afro-American culture in America has been both managed and dominated by White culture since Africans as slaves came to America. They have never been a dominant agent although parts of the Black culture have become part of popular culture in the modern world. Blues has existed as a universal phenomenon, but the concept between the black and the white is completely different. Today, the dominant society manipulated the minor society with hegemony that the major group takes agreement of its policy from the minor group through resistance, fight, and conflicts. The major group can justify its control over the minor group because blues can be a power of the White people, allowing the Black people to share the blues culture. Blues culture in Wilson's plays could be interpreted as hegemony theory because two opposite worlds, the dominant group and the controlled group share different ways. The White people regard blues as their play or enjoyment and believe that blues has become the part of their life. Meanwhile, they do not deny that Afro-Americans also share the blues, although it is applied to a completely different area by the black people. Wilson's rewriting of black history represents the African culture, but in the view of the White, the dominant group can make a comprise with the Black group because Afro-Americans believe that they can have their culture in the process of the conflicts, struggle, harmony, and finally integration or assimilation. Of course, the resistance does not usually happen directly, but both sides take one common culture in order to take their own interests. In fact, in the view of the hegemony theory, Afro-Americans could not help but see their blues used as a new kind of trend. The more the blacks are willing to get the hegemony in American society, the more the position of hegemony for the white will be ratified powerfully.