대서양횡단 혼종성의 정치학: 『 루벤과 레이첼 』에 나타난 미국적 국가 정체성 만들기

초록

From its foundation, America had been deeply rooted in transatlantic experiences. In recent critical discourse, transatlantic studies have played a significant part in reading early American novel. Accordingly, it has been argued that the category of early American novel should expand to include novels which have transatlantic background and theme. Susanna Rowson’s Reuben and Rachel can be one prominent example of this new reading. Reuben and Rachel delineates a fictionalized history of Columbus, who becomes the founder not only of a new nation, but of the extended family that the novel represents through ten generations. This family history involves a series of transatlantic crossings and encounters between two different racial identities. I argue that the novel represents transatlantic hybridity, a term which I use in recourse to Homi Bhabha’s concept. Even with its depiction of some cases of hybridization between two different cultures, however, Reuben and Rachel reinscribes American national identity. Although transatlantic hybridity represented in the novel apparently points to a subversive implication that the nation was founded on the premise that it liberally incorporated the Other, Reuben and Rachel, the tenth generation from Columbus himself, are described to position themselves as the most virtuous citizens of the American Republic in the end. Despite its potential for transatlantic interpretation, then, Reuben and Rachel again corroborates the argument that the rise of the American novel is closely interrelated with building the new nation in its nascent phase.

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