제이콥스 젠킨스의 『혼혈아』에 구현된 나뉨/배제의 빗장풀기

Abstract

This study explores Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon (2015) in terms of passing, blackness, and a theatrical technique. Protagonist Zoe is an octoroon, who draws the intertextuality with a black woman represented in Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859). This play provides as melodramatic elements such as triangular conflict with Zoe between good white man George and bad white M’Closky. In particular, M’Closky’s intense desire to own Zoe leads to Zoe’s degradation to a slave as well as her inescapable identity crisis. Unknown who she is, Zoe realizes the significance of one drop of blood from her ancestors. According to Jim Crow Law, marriage between white man and an octoroon woman is not allowed so that George and Zoe are not free from it. This is originated from the racial code institutionalized on the basis of the whites’ racial discriminative ideology and superiority. In particular, division and seclusion functions as a racial ideology in terms of the differences in skin color. The social hierarchy serves miscegenation as an unlawful mechanism, thus making it intensified in building black women’s identities. In the end, Zoe is sold as a slave since she is an octoroon. Situated in an identity crisis, suicide is Zoe’s last resort. This play requires us to examine the racial ideology, which is deeply rooted on skin color and one drop of black blood. Terrebonne plantation is symbolized as this historical prejudice on slavery.