옥타비아 버틀러의 『킨드레드』—억압된 역사의 귀환과 그 현재성

Abstract

This paper attempts to read Octavia Butler’s Kindred in terms of how the slavery history that was oppressed by the American public discourse finally returns and insists on its ongoing presence. In the novel, Dana Franklin, an African American woman living in the 1970’s is driven into the antebellum South through time travel. Even though she seems to be transferred to the past by Rufus in trouble, her white male ancestor, it is revealed that the repressed history of slavery calls Dana so that she can directly face the realities of slavery. The encounter with slavery leads Dana to get a profound understanding of the unspeakably grim reality of slavery in which slave women are constantly exposed to white male’s sexual violence. Butler shows how the problematic relationship of Dana and Kevin, her white husband, reflects the legacy of the oppressive relationship of Rufus and Alice. Butler attempts to cope with the racial conflicts of the American society through their changing relationship. Kindred is significant in the neo-slave narrative tradition in that it persuasively presents how slavery produces ongoing effects on the present racial contradictions of American society, and in that it suggests a solution to the conflicts through an in-depth investigation of miscegenation.