Calypso Music and Postcolonial Masculinity in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners

국문 초록 (Abstract)

본 논문은 샘 셀본의 『외로운 런던인들』 속 흑인 남성 이주민들의 남성성을 연구한다. 인종과 성의 관계가 복잡한 차원에서 맺어지는 이 소설은 흑인 남성성이 백인 여성들과의 관계에서 변화하고 수정됨을 보여주는데, 런던이라는 공간에서 맺어지는 사회적 관계에서 백인 여성들과의 성적 관계는 흑인 이주민 남성들에게 있어서 주류 문화로 진입하기 위한 하나의 방편이 된다. 특히 소설의 전체적인 외형이 트리니다드의 전통적인 음악 장르인 칼립소를 따라 구성되고 있다는 점을 고려하면 소설 속에 드러나는 인종적, 성적 역학관계는 더욱 흥미롭다. 트리니다드의 남성중심적 전통문화에서 칼립소는 가부장적 이성애를 찬미하고 동성애를 혐오하는 전통적 남성성이 문화의 중심인데, 이런 의미에서 본다면 『외로운 런던인들』이 보여주는 칼립소와 런던의 조합은 전후 런던이라는 공간에서 사회적으로 거세당한 흑인 남성들의 남성성 회복이 상징적으로 이루어지는 모순적 양상을 보여준다고 볼 수 있다.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This article explores the masculine construction of West Indian immigrants in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners. Selvon represents the cross-racial relationship between the black male immigrants and the white British women in the novel in ways that illuminate the interlocking space in which black masculinity is revised and negotiated. The protagonists’ masculine struggle shows highly complex dimensions of the cross-racial gender economy; sexual relations become an anticolonial struggle to reach the mainstream British culture, and this sexual self-assertion of the black male protagonists interrupts British culture’s hegemonic power. Moreover, the sexual quest in the novel becomes even more interesting, given the structural presence of Calypso, an Afro-Caribbean music genre in colonial Trinidad. The Lonely Londoners consists of various ballads that imitate the structure of calypso music. As the calypso symbolizes hegemonic misogyny and homophobia in the male-centered Trinidadian culture, the allusion of calypso music reflects phallic and homophobic self-affirmation against social castration. This reading, placing black men’s sexual quest toward white women in the context of the Trinidadian calypso tradition, explains the contradictory self-construction of black male immigrants in The Lonely Londoners; by alluding to the vernacular folk tradition and thus by contextualizing the social standings of ethnic minorities in multicultural London within the patriarchal culture of the West Indies, the novel explores the intersection wherein the mythic postcolonial black masculinity becomes visible.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1. Introduction 2. Colonial Black Masculinity 3. Interracial Gender and Sexuality 4. Black Machismo and Calypso Music 5. Conclusion Works Cited

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Salick, Roydon, "The Novels of Samuel Selvon: a Critical Study" Greenwood Press 2001

2 Selvon, Samuel, "The Lonely Londoners" Longman Publishing 1985

3 Bhabha, Homi, "The Location of Culture" Routledge 1994

4 McClintock, Anne, "Rethinking Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue" Humanity Books 1999

5 Dawson, Ashley, "Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain" U of Michigan P 2007

6 Gibson, Nigel C., "Fanon: the Postcolonial Imagination" Blackwell Publishing 2003

7 Rampaul, Giselle, "Bodies and Voices: The Force-Field of Representation and Discourse in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies" Rodopi 2008

8 McCulloch, John, "Black Soul White Artifact: Fanon’s Clinical Psychology and Social Theory" Cambridge UP 1983

9 Fanon, Frantz, "Black Skin, White Masks" Grove Press 1952

10 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, "Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire" Columbia UP 1985

11 Barratt, Harold, "An Island is Not a World: a Reading of Sam Selvon’s An Island is a World" 27 (27): 25-34, 1996

12 Rahim, Jennifer, "(Not) Knowing the Difference: Calypso Overseas and the Sound of Belonging in Selected Narratives of Migration" 3 (3): 1-17, 2005