넬라 라슨의 『패싱』 속 흑백 패싱과 정동 연구

초록

This article examines affect and its functions in Passing written by Nella Larsen, a prominent female writer during the Harlem Renaissance. As theoretical scaffoldings, the article utilizes the concept of affect Spinoza first introduced in his Ethics to present material understanding of human emotions and Gilles Deleuze’s concepts of war machine, line of flight, and so on. The article elucidates operation of three affective modes—joy, sadness, desire—which help readers understand complicated emotional interactions between Irene and Clare who racially pass as white women because of their racial hybridity. This elucidation purports to find how racial politics operate in affective interaction between two mulattoes. Both women live in different situations but they both get threatened by racial violence. Clare especially live in the danger of debunking of her true identity by his husband, John Bellew, a white supremacist. Irene gets attracted to Clare secretively but also apprehends tragic consequences of her desire simultaneously confused by complicated mixture of joy and sadness as affects. The essay then analyzes political meaning of the spectrum of affects such as ‘uncanny.’ The article illuminates Claire’s affective challenge as war machine that covertly deconstructs seemingly impregnable castle of racialism and binary separation between whites and blacks and its failure.

키워드