미국 다인종 문학의 정전화 과정과 비판적 다문화주의

The Multiethnic Literature in American Literary Canonization and Critical Multiculturalism

This paper aims to propose the better viewpoints in studying and teaching the canons, investigating multiculturalism that played an important role in including the multiethnic literary texts among the canons after the canon debates. This article analyzes the various aspects of the several multicultural perspectives related with the canonization of multiethnic literary texts. Through this analysis, both the conservative and the liberal multiculturalism are proved to use the canonization of multiethnic literary texts to reinforce and perpetuate the existing dominant culture. In spite of the most critical stance against monoculturalism, the left-liberal multiculturalism results in the objectification and the self-orientalization of the multiethnic literature by focusing on the traditional native culture and the absolute cultural difference. And it also assumes cultural relativism, cultural essentialism, and cultural nationalism that keep different cultural and ethnic groups from attaining solidarity. The critical multiculturalism tries to overcome the above-mentioned problems, and to explain cultural and ethnic difference within the frame of a political, economic and global system in which a dominant culture still maintains its privilege and power. The critical ideas and practices in critical multiculturalism help to prevent the multiethnic literature from serving to perpetuate the existing dominant culture. And they also help the multiethnic writers and critics to keep the perspective that the multiethnic literature is not a purely imaginative construct and an addition of dominant literature, but a practical means to understand and resolve the cultural and ethnic inequality in the real world.