earticle

영어

This paper discusses On the Road as an attempt of the white male to reinscribe his racial and sexual identities. The process of identity formation in the text takes the form of self-marginalization, in which the white-male individuals maintain a critical distance from society by associating themselves with marginal spaces occupied by Others. This self-marginalization from the center enables them to escape from socially-given identities, from domesticated masculinity to the too-much-civilized whiteness. By distancing themselves from society and the identities it entails, the white male protagonists strive to acquire a new form of genuine identity uncorruptible by the social order. This gesture of social criticism has led many critics to regard this text as a fundamentally dissenting gesture against American middle-class white values, embodying the true spirit of the Beat Generation. However, the problematic that On the Road reveals is that, in structuring his social critique, Kerouac reaffirms, if unwittingly, the discourses of mainstream America that he works so hard to undermine. This is most keenly felt in his identification with racial Others. Although he finds a powerful impulse against the post-war American society in racial marginality, he nevertheless ends up reinforcing the imperial gaze of white men on the colonized. More to the point, Kerouac’s imperialized description of Others is exactly the vehicle through which the white male protagonists can restate their individualist freedom in contrast to the confined Otherness. Given that, this paper aims to demonstrate that On the Road is, in an ultimate sense, less a socially dissenting text than an attempt to find an imagined solution to the problem of white male’s assailed identity.