토니 모리슨과 미국 흑인문학: ‘미국흑인’이라는 재상상된 공동체의 사명

Abstract

Like, or more than, any other African American fiction writers, Toni Morrison is concerned with the way African Americans have been conceived of as an imagined community and how the African American women’s community can be shaped as a politico-ethical agency in her novels. For a fuller understanding of Morrison’s views of black people and women’s community, I investigate in detail her responses to each case of such significant historical events ranging from the post-Civil Rights period to the so-called postracial era. Then, in order to locate Toni Morrison in broader currents of African American history and thought, I give an overview of the very contemporary criticisms which explore the tensions between the (local) community-based discipline of Black Studies and the transatlantic inquiry of Black Cultural Studies. Back to Morrison’s writings, I argue that the black people Morrison imagines is a ghostly community on the grounds that just as the past haunts the present, so the imagined community of black people serves as a historical reminder of the “something to be done” in American society. Further, drawing on a group of philosophers and theorists, such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot, Giorgio Agamben, etc. I also claim that Morrison’s black women’s community features an “inoperative community” and a “coming community” as well.