히스토리 블루스: 토니 모리슨적 역사와 신화의 변증법

Abstract

Who is the black man? Moreover, as questioned by F. Fanon, “what does the black man want?” No, not at all right. These questions are simply wrong: they commit the fallacy of complex question. Before asking these questions, the logically antecedent question must be asked: is the black man really “Man?” As for Toni Morrison, the answer is simply negative. To her, the black man is not “Man” at all. Moreover, in terms of the Western or the Enlightenment idea of “Self/Identity,” the black man does not have “Self/Identity” either. The black man has only “the otherness of the Self,” that is, in Fanon’s famous words, “Black Skin, White Mask.” To Morrison, this phantasmic depersonalization/alienation of the black people is eloquently but miserably condensed in an ardent eager for “the bluest eye” as shown by the girl named Pecola. A total distortion of beauty, identity, in the end, life itself. Then, why does this dislocation/displacement/defilement of the black people happen? Why all these interstices of Self/Identity? To Morrison, its main reason is the absence of history. “The Black,” as an eternal Otherness, has been regarded as a something devoid of name/ancestor/history. Simply as a “You-are-not-humanbeing” thing. What, then, has to be done? As a novelist, Morrison tried to compose her own history blues via her various novels. In other words, she has tried to return the name/ancestor/history back to the Black which has been violently plundered and erased by the White. So the true beginning of the humane life for the Black. But what then? If the hidden black history is revealed, will everything go well? What will happen, if the black history turns into the history with the capital H? In a word, what will happen if the “soft” history degrades into the “hard” myth? The main purpose of this paper is to answer these questions by envisaging Morrison’s novels from the perspective of her endless efforts for recovering the black humane dignity, first of all, by redeeming the black history. In doing this, the dangers as well as the importances of the so-called “making History” will be speculated.