The (Im)possible Site of Multifold Hybridity in Nella Larsen's Quicksand and Passing
- 주제(키워드) Nella Larsen , hybridity , liminality , mulatta , fetish , Quicksand , Passing
- 발행기관 고려대학교 대학원
- 지도교수 윤조원
- 발행년도 2018
- 학위수여년월 2018. 8
- 학위구분 석사
- 학과 대학원 영어영문학과
- 세부전공 미국문학
- 원문페이지 117 p
- 실제URI http://www.dcollection.net/handler/korea/000000081944
- UCI I804:11009-000000081944
- DOI 10.23186/korea.000000081944.11009.0000816
- 본문언어 영어
- 제출원본 000045954465
초록/요약
This thesis examines the multilayered hybridity of race, gender and sexuality in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Passing and the ways in which her heroines’ bodies function as the aesthetic grounds of experiment and resistance, signifying the (im)possible site of racial, sexual and cultural liminality. These narratives are propelled by the hybrid subjects’ contestation and transformation, as they slide or “pass” between unitary classificatory systems. Larsen flouts the existing motif of the tragic mulatta, for, although the theme of tragedy persists, her texts deal with the characters’ hybridity in terms of not only race but also of their gender, sexuality and class. Larsen’s novels are not about the impossibility of black female representation as previous critics insist, but rather about the impossibility of representing people who are not containable within the term, black female. Thus, this thesis addresses the need to view Larsen’s works as carving out another discursive route for liminal experiences, as her characters embody the impossibility of hybrid subjects’ viability. The thesis goes one step further than examining hybridity as a signifying marker of racial and sexual difference to address the need to read the hybrid body as an overvalued and fetishized object, eroticized and aestheticized not only by society but also by the hybrid subjects themselves. This phenomenon, in turn, affects the way racialized and sexualized individuals perceive and conceive the outer world in relation to their own subjectivities. Their bodies as the hybrid space of uncertain and ambiguous identity transformations become their own fetishized mediums in (re)constructing and (re)negotiating their identities to make sense of themselves and their worlds. This particular survival tactic conceived by Larsen’s characters alludes to the ways in which they process and counter the outside force of ideological interpellation in a form of self-fetishization. In the end, Larsen’s heroines are unable to solve the existential dilemma of maintaining a viable site of cultural difference through their strategy, underscoring the impossibility of the hybrid third space in a given society. Their survival tactic of self-fetishization to fight for their own validity and legibility inevitably ends in failure. This is due to the inherently ambivalent nature of fetish which simultaneously reinforces and undermines the viability of the in-between space that they occupy. Ultimately, through applying the idea of hybridity as a major site of cultural difference onto the aesthetics of the body, this thesis highlights Larsen’s critique of the (im)possible site of multifold hybridity.
more목차
Introduction 1
I. The Body as a Third Space: Overvaluation of Hybridity 11
II. “Things. Things. Things”: Disintegrating Body in Quicksand 30
III. “Lovely” Clare: Fetishizing the Corporeal Mirror in Passing 68
Conclusion 102
Works Cited 105
Abstract 111
