『재미난 집: 가족 희비극』: 가장 개인적인 퀴어 서술의 사회개혁 가능성

Abstract

This paper examines Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home as a social reform narrative through which the author deconstructs all forms of oppressive hierarchies and deep-seated prejudices. This autographic memoir is a very personal story where Bechdel recursively attempts to identify the cause of a traumatic event for her: the death of her father Bruce, a closeted queer. Her uncompromising efforts to find its truth form into a spiraling narrative that obsessively reexamines the incomprehensible event from various perspectives secured by copious intertextual references to fictional and real sources. Thanks to this narrative structure, Bechdel gradually staves off prejudices based on heteronormativity or homonormativity, confronts her trauma, and embraces her morally reprehensible―sometimes even criminal―father as a fellow queer artist. Specifically, as the narrative unfolds, she comes to identify the cause of Bruce’s death as the slippage between signifier and signified within the social definition of queer identity. She then redefines “queer” as a term, which enables her to recognize the erotic truth and artistic ambition that she shares with her father. Eventually, from her “queer” perspective founded on the virtues of equality, compassion, and affection, Bechdel’s personal narrative offers a reform mechanism that can debunk prejudiced and discriminatory hierarchies as arbitrarily constructed discourse. With this queer narrative, Bechdel’s personal tragedy finally projects optimism about social reforms.