자메이카 킨케이드의 『애니 쟌』: 탈/식민지 흑인여성으로 성장하기

Abstract

Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John : Growing up as a Post/Colonial Subject All Caribbean nations share a history of foreign domination, of colonialism and imperialism, as well as a heritage of revolt, resistance, and struggle to assert their freedom, a struggle that still continues at the economic and cultural levels. The Caribbean also shares a legacy of ethnic, racial, and linguistic diversity that distinguishes the region from anywhere else in the world: African, East Indian, Amer-indian, European, Asian, and Middle Eastern cultures have all contributed to the composition of the recent populations, to their philosophy, way of life, folklore and religion, and literature. Produced mainly in English, French, Spanish, and Dutch and initially following the aesthetic conventions of the colonizing centers, Caribbean literature used to be studied as an extension of the Western literary tradition. These multiple and often conflicting cultures and value systems of Antigua, a small island of the West Indies, prevent Annie John, a heroine of Jamaica Kinciad’s autobiographical novel Annie John (1985), from developing some kind of coherent, autonomous subjectivity and instead leave her horribly fragmented. Annie John may indeed be read as an anti-Bildungsroman, as the novel opens with images of death instead of birth and closes with an image of evacuation and loss instead of the expected fulfilment, harmony, and absorption into a larger social body. Those differences highlight the fact that precisely the pernicious system of colonization and pervasive British influences hinder the protagonist’s ability to achieve the proper self-definition. Kincaid’s revising of the genre which insists on modifications relating specifically to the post/colonial subject’s anxieties is a step for creating Caribbean post/colonial bildungsroman.