『붉은 글자 희곡』에 나타난 하위주체 흑인여성의 몸―언어 문제

Abstract

Suzan-Lori Parks is an African-American woman playwright who continuously inherits the aesthetics of black women literature. The Red Letter Play, which consists of two plays In the Blood and Fucking A represents the lives of African-American women who have been oppressed and marginalized in American history. In both plays, two protagonists have the same name, Hester. Hester reminds the heroine of The Scarlet Letter, a canonical book of America. However different from ‘white’ Hester in The Scarlet Letter, two ‘black’ Hesters can’t read and write, have no skills and have to work as an abortionist(Fucking A) or a sexworker (In the Blood). They have no right to choose a job and even are deprived of living with her child. In Fucking A, Hester’s son was sent to jail as stealing a piece of meat driven by hunger. After then, her son breaks out of prison and is pursued by the Hunters. Hester in In the Blood is accused as a ‘slut’ from the society and forced to have a hysterectomy since having five children whose fathers are different. It indicates that Fucking A and In the Blood recall the lives of the Black slave families, racial and gender discrimination in American history. Suzan-Lori Parks tries to revive and insert the narratives of African-American into the mainstream discourses of American history and literature with the two plays. Both Hesters can be called as the subalterns who were omitted, silenced, ignored and suffered from social discrimination and economic exclusion, according to the theory of Gayatri Spivak. Subalterns can’t speak with their own voice and can’t be heard in dominant discourse, and therefore, two Hesters as the subalterns couldn’t change her situation with just telling. Although two Hesters try to make the counter-discourse by making a tale of her life (In the Blood) and cursing the ruling classes with ‘TALK’ (Fucking A), their voice weren’t enough to make changes. Hester is still accused as a slut (In the Blood) or her curse didn’t work (Fucking A). Facing with difficulties, the excluded African-American women Hesters speak with their black bodies. Going through the deathful suffering, their bodies remember the memories of oppression, since bodies can be the witness of it with the scars. As their bodies function as an archive as well as text that record their histories, the acts of making marks on their bodies can be the language that deliver messages. This ‘physical language’ is the voice of their own. Spoken languages can be secrets and mean different things, but the physical language will always reveal the truth, like a birthmark that never changes. This paper reads mothers’ killing of her sons in both plays as a ‘speaking through their bodies of subalterns’. Two son’s death are shown on the stages for different reasons. As an escaped convict, the son in Fucking A chooses to die before being abused by Hunters. Hester in In the Blood beats her son who kept calling her ‘slut’ like the society to death. However these deaths can be regarded as an act of speaking with ‘physical language’. Each killing of their son can be translated as the rejection of being abused and the disobedience of ‘interpellation’. This act looks like self-torture but also is a desperate attempt to break the spell of suppressive ideologies. African-American gendered subalterns in the plays of Parks are not silent. They speak with their own bodies. This ‘physical language’ is not just means for communication but the movements from object to subject.