아프라 벤의 _오루노코_에 나타난 권력과 신체의 관계

Abstract

This paper explores the relation between power and the body in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, focusing on the conflict between Oroonoko and the king in Coramantien, and that between Oroonoko and the British ruling power in Surinam. It especially investigates how power is exerted on the body-- Oroonoko's as well as Imoinda's. Throughout the text, Imoinda's body embodies the lack of power as the body of a woman in Coramantien and the body of a slave in Surinam. Interestingly, however, Oroonoko's body symbolizes power and simultaneously the lack of power. In Coramantien, he is the prince but is subjected to the king's sovereign power in the double sense that he is the king's subject and grandson. Because of this paradoxical status, he is forced to lose Imoinda, who reluctantly suffers herself to be a king's mistress. But it is also this paradoxical status that exempts him from the death penalty when he takes the right of love to Imoinda. Instead, the king attempts to restore his damaged sovereign power by selling off Imoinda as a slave. Similarly, in Surinam, Oroonoko is admired as the king by Black slaves but is in fact a possession of the White slave master. The difference is that while the power mechanism in Coramantien is operated in order to reactivate the king's sovereign power, the power mechanism in Surinam is put into operation for economic as well as political reasons. To put it another way, the primary concern of the British ruling power in Surinam is to keep slaves politically subjected and economically productive bodies. And Oroonoko as the king of slaves is utilized as a means of disciplining slaves. When Oroonoko takes the lead in the revolt against the British ruling power, slaves vow to follow him to death. But their bodies, which have been disciplined by constant surveillance and regular whipping, turn out to be too docile to perform their vow. The failure of the revolt, in other words, the effect of power relations between Oroonoko and the British ruling power, comes to be inscribed on Oroonoko's body. The ruling power are revenged on Oroonoko by punishing him first with disgraceful whipping and then with public execution. As the last resort, Oroonoko destructs his body. By making him an example to slaves, however, the British ruling power use him as a means not only to restore the political order but also to secure docile and useful labor power even after they execute him. But it is the narrator, who is partly in collusion with the ruling power in Surinam, that most powerfully disciplines and controls Oroonoko in that she turns him into her “slave,” though in a metaphorical sense, and his tragedy into a diverting story for British readers.