『맥베스』의 친족, 『피어리스』의 쌍둥이: 아시아계/미국인 여성의 공동체 없는 인종 정체성

When Jihae Park’s Peerless reflects on Asian/American women’s racial identities, its source play Macbeth’s understanding of kinship haunts the imagination. Called “a peerless kinsman” by Duncan, Macbeth is a great solider with privileged and matchless powers. But he is also considered ‘peer-less’, cut off from the fellow aristocratic male relatives and friends in the honor-based military world. As a Shakespearean derivative, Peerless similarly depicts the Asian twin sisters M and L, who have been fighting for their cutthroat survival in college admission, alienated from the history- and culture-specific time and place that can be identified as ‘Asian.’ What replaces the historically and culturally constructed identities is the twins’ fascination with being exclusively alike to each other, an affective orientation that blocks their meaningful engagement with the larger community. Alternately, though, the play suggests another ethnic minority of a Native American descent, who gets reunited with his long-separated native tribe and discovers through this ethnic membership a way back to the larger social fabric. In offering a sharp critique of both hypervisibility and invisibility of Asian/Americans, Peerless offers a nuanced reading of how belongingness works – whether individuals seek to be peer-less or crave to be in the chain of relationships. KCI Citation Count: 0