호모 사케르의 윤리: 창래 리의 『제스처 라이프』와 『항복한 자』 연구
Ethics of Homo Sacer: A Study of Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life and The Surrendered
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This study explores Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life and The Surrendered, by remaining attentive to the novels’ shared subject matter of war and its enduring legacy reflected in the Korean American protagonists. To achieve the nuanced understanding of ethics which is not formulated negatively against the other, I illustrate how the male protagonists’ relentless pursuit of assimilation leads to subsume the other, namely, the female characters, Korean comfort woman and war orphan, respectively, through the exclusionary politics. Firstly, I will address how the male characters in both novels end up reenforcing the status quo by faithfully following the putative logic of the Cold War such as American Exceptionalism and the Cold War containment policy. Secondly, I will highlight the ways in which the debasement of the female characters, whom I regard as “homo sacer” using Agamben’s term, and their subsequent deaths are undergirded by the double process of abjection, first by the sovereignty which engenders homo sacer and pits them against each other, then by the male characters, who act as agent of abjection for the sovereignty, while suturing themselves back into their “assigned places” of the system. The female characters project multiple versions of ethics, provisional and personal through and through, to reveal the poverty of the “ethical” intervention of the male characters.
Abstract
This study explores Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life and The Surrendered, by remaining attentive to the novels’ shared subject matter of war and its enduring legacy reflected in the Korean American protagonists. To achieve the nuanced understanding of ethics which is not formulated negatively against the other, I illustrate how the male protagonists’ relentless pursuit of assimilation leads to subsume the other, namely, the female characters, Korean comfort woman and war orphan, respectively, through the exclusionary politics. Firstly, I will address how the male characters in both novels end up reenforcing the status quo by faithfully following the putative logic of the Cold War such as American Exceptionalism and the Cold War containment policy. Secondly, I will highlight the ways in which the debasement of the female characters, whom I regard as “homo sacer” using Agamben’s term, and their subsequent deaths are undergirded by the double process of abjection, first by the sovereignty which engenders homo sacer and pits them against each other, then by the male characters, who act as agent of abjection for the sovereignty, while suturing themselves back into their “assigned places” of the system. The female characters project multiple versions of ethics, provisional and personal through and through, to reveal the poverty of the “ethical” intervention of the male characters.
참고문헌 (18)
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