퀴어한 유목적 주체로서의 술라: 토니 모리슨의『술라』다시 읽기

Abstract

Toni Morrison’s Sula (1973), a novel about a black female who attempts the most radical self-discovery among Morrison’s characters, has been a constant source of critical debate since its publication regarding the interpretation of Sula’s character and her relationship with Nel. In the white-male-centered American society, a search for self has been an ethical task for black women, who have been socially forced to live without ego, and affirming ‘the self,’ which has always been defined as ‘the other,’ is only possible through solidarity with other black women. To emphasize that ‘sense-ability to the other’ must be restored in order to re-write the story of social problems sabotaging the female solidarity sharply depicted in Sula as a story of ‘recovery,’ this paper reads the relationship between Nel and Sula in the context of ‘womanism’ and re-reads Sula’s character in terms of ‘queer.’ I analyze Sula’s ‘queer-ness’ by analogy with the concept of the ‘nomadic subject’ of Gilles Deleuze and Rosi Braidotti, rather than the context of lesbianism, and also discuss the politics of the novel Sula as a ‘queer’ metatext.