마리즈 꽁데의 탈식민담론 윤리 -Crossing the Mangrove를 중심으로

Abstract

Jung-Sook KimThis paper is an attempt to show how Maryse Cond , an Antillean writer, portrays her ideas of expanded humanism based on "the relation without relationship" and cultures of "Rhizome" in her novel Crossing the Mangrove. Instead of the paradigms of exoticism and victimization which have been the main focus in the existing postcolonial writings, Cond depicts a self-sufficient microcosmic Guadeloupean community where each one of the nineteen characters from different races and cultures gives his or her voice with a unique perspective on the life and the death of Francis Sancher, the hero, at the wake for him.As Cond 's nonlinear and nonhierarchical idea of humanism is opposed to "the colonizing and totalizing pseudo-universalism that allowed colonial empires to engage in the profond dehumanization of their subjects," so her open-ended novel creates a literary amalgam that successfully mixes races, cultures and a symbolic and microcosmic mangrove woods. The symbolic mangrove cultures in the novel include the intertextual "alliances" with various literary works, the self-referential ironies between the author and the intellectual nomad, Francis Sancher and a mixture of the popular detective story and classical tragedy which teem an abundance of perspectives, desires and hidden stories of social and personal frustrations.As Leah Hewitt puts it, the strength of this black "womanist" novelist lies in "her refusal either to make her work subservient to a political cause or to forget its social anchorings." And if literature cannot transform the world, "Cond " would help "create new ways of reading its dilemmas and taking advantage of its paradoxes." And thus her readers appreciate her effort to reshuffle the worlds.