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초록

Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats explores the intricate interplay of corporeality, spectrality, and femininity in theatrical representation. The central character, Hester, undergoes a unique corporeal journey, embodying a liminal state between life and death. The haunting echoes of her past create a cyclical pattern that, coupled with her sinister blood, ensnares her within a genealogy of performance, urging her to re-enact the past to shape the present. However, realizing that wearing the societal mask of womanliness fails to grant her existence in the eyes of others, she embraces her masculinity, confronts her abjectness, and exchanges her material body for an atemporal haunting spectral body- born out of societal rejection, destined to endure as a societal trauma. Through Performance Studies and Feminist Theory, this article investigates how the play navigates anatomical and performative embodied liminality. This examination provides new insights into the intricate dynamics of gender and identity. Through the character of Hester, the interplay between being a body, having a body, and performing a body introduces a novel perspective on the profound human desire to belong and exist in the eyes of others, both in life and within the realm of theatrical expression.