존 에드가 와이드만의 『소떼 죽이기』: 역사적 사건의 재현과 흑인공동체를 위한 예언적 비전
John Edgar Wideman’s The Cattle Killing: Representation of Historical Event and Prophetic Vision for African American Community
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Considered his most difficult novel, John Edgar Wideman’s The Cattle Killing well represents how the past and the present events are integrated into a single event under the notion of postmodern time concept. Often discussing it with the notion of metahistorical fiction, critics mainly assert that Wideman effectively uses the notion in order to relocate him as a postmodernism writer. However, his novel also suggests strategic representation of African American historical events in a way to reveal the present urgent issues such as racism and racial violence in his community. For example, comparing the Philadelphia fever in 1793 which led to the mass murder of African Americans and the Xhosa’s fall caused by their slaughter of the cattle in 1856 which was led by the female prophet’s wrong prophecy at the same time, he asserts that a racialized vision and its tragic result have occurred regardless of its time and space. He believes that the only way to prevent such tragedy is to have a prophetic leader who can learn valuable lessons from African American history with humanistic and rational mind. Alluding to W. E. B. Du Bois, Wideman attempts to find a leader like Du Bois throughout the American history who has been deemed to be a prophet to save African American community from the racial violence. For Wideman, only a proper leader can stop mass murdering of African Americans by using the lessons from the history and suggests a utopian vision of African American community freed from all racial violence.
Abstract
Considered his most difficult novel, John Edgar Wideman’s The Cattle Killing well represents how the past and the present events are integrated into a single event under the notion of postmodern time concept. Often discussing it with the notion of metahistorical fiction, critics mainly assert that Wideman effectively uses the notion in order to relocate him as a postmodernism writer. However, his novel also suggests strategic representation of African American historical events in a way to reveal the present urgent issues such as racism and racial violence in his community. For example, comparing the Philadelphia fever in 1793 which led to the mass murder of African Americans and the Xhosa’s fall caused by their slaughter of the cattle in 1856 which was led by the female prophet’s wrong prophecy at the same time, he asserts that a racialized vision and its tragic result have occurred regardless of its time and space. He believes that the only way to prevent such tragedy is to have a prophetic leader who can learn valuable lessons from African American history with humanistic and rational mind. Alluding to W. E. B. Du Bois, Wideman attempts to find a leader like Du Bois throughout the American history who has been deemed to be a prophet to save African American community from the racial violence. For Wideman, only a proper leader can stop mass murdering of African Americans by using the lessons from the history and suggests a utopian vision of African American community freed from all racial violence.
참고문헌 (18)
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- Wideman, John Edgar, "The Cattle Killing" (1997), Mariner