입양 다큐멘터리 <일인칭 복수>(First Person Plural)에 나타난 기억, 상실, 정체성

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how memory, loss and identity in the transnational adoption documentary directed by Deann Borshay Liem, First Person Plural, are represented to illustrate the poignant process of the transnational adoptees’ search for subjectivity as an Asian female adoptee as well as an Asian immigrant based on the concepts of David Eng’s “racial melancholia” and Anne Anline Cheng’s “hypochondria.”In First Person Plural, we witness the numerous ways in which Deann Borshay Liem’s past in Korea have been repressed, the continuous ways in which her racial difference and past history are managed and denied, so that she cannot mourn what she has lost from her 8-year life in Korea since she was adopted into the Borshay family. Furthermore, the documentary portrays Deann Borshay Liem’s frustrating conflicts and impossible identifications with whiteness that remain perpetually elusive. After her first visit to Korea when she met her birth mother and birth family, she was very confused. Since then, she has recognized that “Emotionally, there wasn’t room in my mind for two mothers.” Because the transnational adoption is largely devoid of emotional agency for the adoptee, Deann Borshay Liem decided to visit Korea with her adoptive parents. In her attempt to mourn the unspeakable losses initiated by the transnational adoption in 1966, she tried to recover and revitalize a profound form of racial melancholia, one that reduces memories to dreams and agency to fantasy. In returning to Korea, she is forced to acknowledge the fact that confronting the past is always double-edged, challenging any sense of recoupable stability. In short, there is no smooth relationship between the ideological demands of the white American family and the Asian adoptee’s disjunctive affect, as shown in Deann Borshay Liem’s search for her own identity as an Asian female adoptee. However, it is necessary for her to confront the past through visiting her Korean birth mother and family in order to confirm her current position and identity.