＂내 이름은 바라바스, 나는 유태인이요＂: 『몰타의 유태인』에 나타난 역할극의 전복성과 한계에 관해
Jewish Performativity in The Jew of Malta
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This paper reads the way in which Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta deals with the political implication in the early modern fashioning of Jewishness. In doing so, this paper attempts to explore how the play looks into the way in which early modern European Christians were building up a fantasy about stable supremacy in a closely intertwined discourse of race and religion at the expense of the Jewish Other. It also discusses how, and to what extent, the playwright challenges the contemporary construction of essentially impure and evil Jews in opposition to inherently pious and superior European Christians. In order to better understand Marlowe's representation of Barabas, the Jewish merchant-protagonist, as well as the anti-semitic Maltese context in which the play is located, this paper first introduces the history of anti-Jewish arguments in medieval and early modern Europe. Then it goes on to argue that Judith Butler's theory on performativity helps analyze Barabas's attempt to dismantle the Maltese society by performing destructive stereotypes of a criminal Jew and thus by conforming to the imagination of the dominantly white, Christian, and male community in Malta. For anti-semitism does not tell so much about Jews as about the society that produces the discourse itself. Barabas succeeds in agitating the apparently stable boundaries of racial, religious, political, and moral differences by way of proving that a typical Jew with negative qualities is not born but is constructed, and thus can be performed. Consequently, the audience can see more clearly that anti-semitism is a symbolic system that is kept to maintain particular social systems, not an essential truth. One cannot conclude, however, that Marlowe's intention was to advocate the Jewish community that has been unjustly persecuted throughout the last millennium, nor can one argue that Barabas is radically subversive in his disturbing role-play. For, by making a Jew perform "the Jew", the playwright seems in the end to have created another Jewish monster and father, who forecloses the possibilities of alternative performativity in manipulating his daughter according to the patriarchal rule of the gendered Maltese society.
Abstract
This paper reads the way in which Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta deals with the political implication in the early modern fashioning of Jewishness. In doing so, this paper attempts to explore how the play looks into the way in which early modern European Christians were building up a fantasy about stable supremacy in a closely intertwined discourse of race and religion at the expense of the Jewish Other. It also discusses how, and to what extent, the playwright challenges the contemporary construction of essentially impure and evil Jews in opposition to inherently pious and superior European Christians. In order to better understand Marlowe's representation of Barabas, the Jewish merchant-protagonist, as well as the anti-semitic Maltese context in which the play is located, this paper first introduces the history of anti-Jewish arguments in medieval and early modern Europe. Then it goes on to argue that Judith Butler's theory on performativity helps analyze Barabas's attempt to dismantle the Maltese society by performing destructive stereotypes of a criminal Jew and thus by conforming to the imagination of the dominantly white, Christian, and male community in Malta. For anti-semitism does not tell so much about Jews as about the society that produces the discourse itself. Barabas succeeds in agitating the apparently stable boundaries of racial, religious, political, and moral differences by way of proving that a typical Jew with negative qualities is not born but is constructed, and thus can be performed. Consequently, the audience can see more clearly that anti-semitism is a symbolic system that is kept to maintain particular social systems, not an essential truth. One cannot conclude, however, that Marlowe's intention was to advocate the Jewish community that has been unjustly persecuted throughout the last millennium, nor can one argue that Barabas is radically subversive in his disturbing role-play. For, by making a Jew perform "the Jew", the playwright seems in the end to have created another Jewish monster and father, who forecloses the possibilities of alternative performativity in manipulating his daughter according to the patriarchal rule of the gendered Maltese society.
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