역-형성되는 인종의 실재성과 SF 장르 속의 포스트휴먼 혼종성

Abstract

Race can be back-formed. By back-formation, I mean a particular process of reality configuration which is conceptualized by Brian Massumi who is well versed in the affect theory. The social ills of racism and racial prejudices had long revolved around the biological category of race. Still, race as a political category plays a significant factor in the evolution of humanity. In this sense, I argue that race tends to feed back into itself and to transform its reality, as a result of which it shall become more complex in the posthuman era. To verify this point, I locate two instances of the back-formation of racial reality in several race-related trials in American history and in the case of Barack Obama who transformed a mixed-race boy into the first African-American President of the United States. Also referring to Samuel Delany’s SF novel, Trouble on Triton, as a fictional instance of the racial back-formation, I contend that the queer way of life in the future space of Triton celebrates the posthuman hybridity. Seen from this revisionist perspective, white maleness can be regarded as Bourdieu’s notion of habitus which back-forms the hidden reality of U.S. race relations.