‘이방인’과 ‘국가인’의 경계에 선 가오싱젠(高行健) ― 망명 이후 희곡작품을 중심으로

Abstract

This is a nomad's age against essentialism and ethnicity. ‘Nomadism' is connected with the post-colonial literature and culture, which deny universality and aboriginality and define ‘identity' itself as not fixed but fluid. With the same view, ‘Diaspora' was originally defined as the scattered Jews after the destruction of Jerusalem, but has now expanded to include any expelled person or ethnic group. These two terms are related with ‘Nation'. Anation has the inherent value of exclusion and assimilation, and therefore generates the excluded.(Jacques Attali, 2005). Stuart Hall(2003) defined ‘cultural identity' as ‘the politics of position', which ‘cultural identity' is not essential but situates itself related with the past. He explained that the collectively uniformed identity hardly exists because of discontinuance and differences in the group. Gao(the exiled Chinese) also criticized blind patriotism, “Patriotism is the biggest obstacle for Chinese to convince the individual value.”(2001) But hyper-nomad or diaspora do not refuse related with society, rather they face the trouble of how to related to their past. Gao says “Individuals have communal life. Individuals can not exist after leaving their community.”(2001) However their relations are not for tying up lineage to preserve their cultural blood identity, but oppositely for resisting and interchanging them. Therefore they must intensely self-examine themselves. This paper studies Gao's late works after his exilie in 1987. He is Chinese and French, and he intended to locate himself between the East and West. ‘Diaspora', ‘Nomadism', these two terms rose to the surface and naturally questions occur, such as does fixed cultural identity really exist in this era and what are diasporic writings. Thus this paper considered Chinese and French, the exiled Gao's plays with these two conceptions.