입양 체험기 『덧없는 환영들』에서 읽는 “고유한 장소”

Abstract

Recent studies on the transnational adoptee narratives have focused upon a new individuality based on the discursive constitutions of selfhood. This paper intends to rethink this new individuality in terms of an adoptee’s search for his/her “intrinsic place,” where their beings would peacefully and self-confidently dwell. Jane Jeong Tranka’s Fugitive Visions deals with the author’s autobiographical adoptive experiences : the early abandonment by her Korean family, the adoption by white American parents, the failed marriage with a white man and the subsequent return to Korea with self exhaustion. Jane, the adoptive subject, managed to achieve her own “intrinsic place” after her return to Korea, which she had desperately strived to find in the United States and in Korea in vain. She realized that neither the biogenetic origin of hers nor “as if begotten” family making of adoptive life constitutes her “intrinsic place.” The place as such, the author conveys to the reader, will be possible only when the subject detaches themselves from their presumed place and awakens the genuine “homeless” consciousness as Heidegger declared in his “Building Dwelling Thinking.” It might be emphasized that Jane’s perception of her “homeless” reality enables her to perform the detachment and the true dwelling. In the poignant memoir, the author brings forth the question that our own “intrinsic place” could be the result of our subconscious colonization of the “nonplace,” or “in-between” entities.