애나 드비어 스미스의 <황혼>: 수행적 정체성과 인종적 경계 허물기|RISS 상세보기

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This essay examines ‘performative identity’ in Twilight by Anna Deavere Smith. In this documentary play, Smith represents about forty people who are involved directly or indirectly with LA Riot in 1992. Performing these different characters, Smith demonstrates that identity is not essential but fluid. Therefore, the poststructural concept of identity, which emphasizes performativity, provides a clue to understanding the play. Judith Butler theorizes ‘performative identity’ redeploying a linguistic term from J. L. Austin’s ‘Speech Act Theory.’ According to Butler, identity related to gender is formed through repeated acts associated with gender.
Diverse characters represented through Smith’s body are individuals, but they are connected with one another through the mediation of her performance. Mimicking people’s language, accent, and gesture, Smith travels from one self to another. Because of this trait, her performance sometimes risks stereotyping racial minorities. However, she confuses and destabilizes racial identity constructed in accordance with binary opposition. From a white police officer to a beaten white truck driver and from a black mayor to an ex-gang member, white and black people are not just portrayed as victimizer and victim. In particular, Korean Americans depicted as scapegoats express not only their fear and hatred toward black and Latin people who are mainly responsible for the destruction of their stores but also sympathy and understanding for the predicaments black people suffered through history. By performing different characters, Smith foregrounds the fact that racial identity is in motion.
In a theatrical space created by the unique dramaturgy, characters from different racial, gender and class categories come out of their selves and have a dialogue with other people through Smith’s body. Therefore Twilight is newly defined as challenging to and negotiable with essential identity of race and gender and provides a route in which characters from different racial and cultural backgrounds can understand each other. If politics establishes the borderlines among groups of people and places them in appropriate space based on difference, Smith’s experimental play implies powerful political message by trying to disrupt the lines.

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참고문헌 (Reference)

1 랑시에르, 자크, "미학 안의 불편함" 인간사랑 2008

2 Thompson, Debby, "“Is Race a Trope?”: Anna Deavere Smith and the Question of Racial Performativity" 37 (37): 127-138, 2003

3 Smith, Anna Deavere, "Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992" Doubleday 1994

4 Stanley, Sandra Kumamoto, "Teaching the Politics of Identity in a Post-Identity Age: Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight" 30 (30): 191-208, 2005

5 Omi, Michael, "Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd" Routledge 1994

6 Culler, Jonathan, "Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction" Oxford UP 1997

7 Baldassare, Mark, "Introduction. in: The Los Angeles Riots: Lessons for the Urban Future" Westview P 1-17, 1994

8 Austin, J. L., "How To Do Things With Words. 2nd" Oxford UP 1976

9 Dolan, Jill, "Geographies of Learning: Theatre Studies, Performance, and the ‘Performative.’" 45 : 417-441, 1993

10 Butler, Judith, "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity" Routledge 1990