‘She’s Turned into a Nigger’: The Terror of Race in Nella Larsen’s Passing
- 주제(키워드) Key Words: Nella Larsen , Passing , race , black , African-American 주 제 어: 넬라 라슨 , 패싱 , 인종 , 검정 , 미국 흑인
- 주제(기타) 영어와문학
- 설명문(URI) https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART002594830
- 등재 KCI등재
- 발행기관 현대영미어문학회
- 발행년도 2020
- URI http://www.dcollection.net/handler/ewha/000000176047
- 본문언어 영어
초록/요약
While maintaining the pivotal issue of race in Nella Larsen’s Passing in view, this paper seeks to shift the interpretive focus slightly by contending that far from claiming her black race, Irene Westover’s understanding of the overwhelming significance of race in the U.S. is manifested in her disavowal of her black identity. In the presence of Clare’s passing body, Irene becomes raced, reducible to “a Negro,” both as she is literally cast as a link to the black community, and importantly, when Irene finds herself exposed of her blackness. Thus, this essay concentrates in particular on textual moments that Irene regards a renewed relationship with her childhood acquaintance as highly charged distressing occasions in which she is forced to inhabit a black racial identity. Incorporating Calvin Warren’s Ontological Terror, this essay also argues that Irene’s fear of being black—condition of ejection, a non-being, a black being, and nothingness—persistently informs her increasingly desperate reflections of herself and Clare, and her determination to sever her link to Clare. The horrifying reality of the literal destruction and expulsion of Clare’s passing body at the story’s end seems to be the enactment of Irene’s racial terror.
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