Deconstruction of Hegemonic American Myth through Theatrical Performance : Ping Chong"s Perspectives on "Culture and the Other"

• 영문명: Deconstruction of Hegemonic American Myth through Theatrical Performance : Ping Chong"s Perspectives on "Culture and the Other"
• 발행기관: 한국아메리카학회
• 저자명: Jae-Oh Choi
• 간행물 정보: 『미국학논집』제38집 1호, 5~36쪽, 전체 32쪽
• 주제분류: 인문학 > 기타인문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2006.05.01

영문 초록

  This paper investigates how Ping Chong"s perspectives on "culture and the other" deconstruct hegemonic American myth on people, cultures, and the histories expressed in his two performances, Kind Ness (1986) and Deshima (1990). As Roland Barthes notes, myth is a type of speech which is an anonymous but insidious ideological form prevailing in everyday lives. In the everyday myth, the notion of the other, as Julia Kristeva insightfully points out, is formulated as "the social abject" which is the invented container for whatever is regarded from the pure narcissistic ego attributing the impure traits to the underprivileged. Adapting Barthes and Kristeva, I explores how Chong"s deconstructive myth-making wrestles with the problematic notion of "the other" in both local (national) and global aspects through his theatrical performances.
  Kind Ness (1986), wherein Buzz in gorilla mask and suit is presented as an allegorical figure of the ethnic abject makes thorny political comments on the ethno-centric identity politics of the Reagan era. It deals less with universal (existential) human conditions than the concrete cultural and historical practice of American assimilation and abjection in the 1950s and 60s (allusively to the 1980s). Deshima (1990) traces the present problems of racism and abjection in America to the global routes and historical effects of imperialist power and through the global flows of imperial armies, tributes, people, trade, finance, religion, and racism, from the early encounters of West/East (as early as 16th century) to contemporary geopolitics.
  Exploring Kind Ness and Deshima, I approach Chong"s concept of "the other" as "social abject" inhibiting at the margins. I argue that through Chong"s (counter-) myth-making which destabilizes the authority of hegemonic narratives of the incompatible split between the self and the other, multiple voices of the marginalized return, and the monologue of the hegemonic culture is interrupted. In this paper, I demonstrate how the performance of Chong"s (counter-) myth-making resists the silence, enabling the marginalized abject to become the subjects of their own desires and histories. In the shared political languages of respect, equality, and justice (toward the others), Chong"s perspectives on "culture and the other" prepare for the performance of a complete mode of speech acts which is considered as a harmonious speaking and listening that evokes an inclusive act toward the other.

목차

Ⅰ. Introduction
Ⅱ. The Myth of Free Rational Man and American Identity Politics
Ⅲ. The Myth of History as Progress and the Genealogies of the Other
Ⅳ. Conclusion
Works Cited
Abstract

키워드

Ping Chong culture and the other deconstructive myth-making identity and difference between cultures