눈을 감고 (왼)손으로 쓰다: 마가렛 앳우드의『눈먼 암살자』
Blind Eyes, Writing (Left) Hands: Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin
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This paper aims to examine the anti-phallogocularcentrism of The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, clarifying the multi-layered meanings of ‘blindness’ and ‘assassination’ in the text. The Blind Assassin is a story within stories, interposing newspaper/magazine articles and pulp fictions in Iris Chase Griffen’s memoir about her family. It opens with the suicidal death of Laura, who is Iris’s younger sister and has been sexually abused by Iris’s patriarchal husband Richard, and chases ‘the blind assassin’ of her. Is the assassin Richard, whose eyes represent the voyeuristic and oppressive male gaze? Or is it Iris, whose name also means ‘eyeless’ and who has been blind to her culturally limited status and her sister’s tragedy? To find the answer, it is required to decipher the codes Laura left to Iris and (de)construct meanings of ‘blindness’ and ‘assassination.’ In the text, ‘blindness’ not only means the lack of vision, but also signifies the refusal to be subordinated by the objectifying phallic gaze. As Iris’s memoir and the interpolated novel, which destroy Richard by revealing his atrocities, are written in an unstable, fragmented, and decentered way, ‘assassination’ can also be reinterpreted as an act to subvert the conventional norms of writing and ocularcentric views. The Blind Assassin is, as Iris calls, ‘the left-handed book’ which challenges the ‘right’ phallogocularcentrism and restores the silenced (hi)stories of women.
Abstract
This paper aims to examine the anti-phallogocularcentrism of The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, clarifying the multi-layered meanings of ‘blindness’ and ‘assassination’ in the text. The Blind Assassin is a story within stories, interposing newspaper/magazine articles and pulp fictions in Iris Chase Griffen’s memoir about her family. It opens with the suicidal death of Laura, who is Iris’s younger sister and has been sexually abused by Iris’s patriarchal husband Richard, and chases ‘the blind assassin’ of her. Is the assassin Richard, whose eyes represent the voyeuristic and oppressive male gaze? Or is it Iris, whose name also means ‘eyeless’ and who has been blind to her culturally limited status and her sister’s tragedy? To find the answer, it is required to decipher the codes Laura left to Iris and (de)construct meanings of ‘blindness’ and ‘assassination.’ In the text, ‘blindness’ not only means the lack of vision, but also signifies the refusal to be subordinated by the objectifying phallic gaze. As Iris’s memoir and the interpolated novel, which destroy Richard by revealing his atrocities, are written in an unstable, fragmented, and decentered way, ‘assassination’ can also be reinterpreted as an act to subvert the conventional norms of writing and ocularcentric views. The Blind Assassin is, as Iris calls, ‘the left-handed book’ which challenges the ‘right’ phallogocularcentrism and restores the silenced (hi)stories of women.
참고문헌 (17)
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