랭스턴 휴즈의 디아스포라 시학과 유동적 자아

Abstract

Many critics of Hughes studies have assumed a couple of breaks in his career: his proletarian poetry of the 1930s signals a break with the poetics of Harlem Renaissance while his notorious retreat of the 1950s from his explicit- ly international political orientation means the second break with Marxist poetics. However, I suggest a continuity among these seemingly disparate periods, focusing on his long-held idea of diaspora and fluid self. His poetry has continuously represented diaspora and uneasy site of shifting identities structured by rigid constructions of race and class. Throughout his career, Hughes has represented a fluid self coming out of the experiences of black diaspora; it is a hybrid, interconnective racial identi- ty that easily crosses the boundaries of time and space, and of individual and community. He globally linked struggles against fascism and colonialism abroad based upon the universal experience of diaspora. He has kept diaspo- ran fluid self which challenges and destabilizes the nationalist and imperialist discourse that has grown dominant throughout the first half of the twentieth century. A close reading of his texts encourages a viewing of his works as a subversive performance within a changing political and cultural landscape.