나의 이웃, 나의 박해자인 가족: 이창래의 『비상』과 타자와의 대면
Family as My Neighbor, My Persecutor: Facing the Other in Chang-rae Lee’s Aloft
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Chang-rae Lee’s third novel Aloft has contributed to its author’s newly granted title as a writer who deals with the “universal” as opposed to particular, ethnic concerns. This paper argues that Aloft does represent the “universal,” not with regard to its white male protagonist Jerry Battle, but with regard to its calls for facing one’s family as the “absolutely other” as Emmanuel Levinas would define it. Jerry “declines the Real” when he encounters familial difficulties of which the beginning was the relationship with his late wife Daisy Han, who came to him as the destitute, denuded “face” of the other. It is, however, the additional death of the other that fundamentally disturbs Jerry’s “being” and changes his attitude towards his family and life. His daughter Theresa, disease stricken, sacrifices herself for her unborn baby, so she calls him to face the present of his family and the past related to Daisy’s death. Theresa’s substitutive death beyond Jerry’s knowledge and understanding ultimately invests him with the one responsible for the other, the subject “response-able” to the other’s order of “Thou shalt not kill.” A Levinasian way of reading Aloft will call its readers to face their family as a neighbor who needs their care and responsibility, and a persecutor who even demands their taken-for-granted place at home.
Abstract
Chang-rae Lee’s third novel Aloft has contributed to its author’s newly granted title as a writer who deals with the “universal” as opposed to particular, ethnic concerns. This paper argues that Aloft does represent the “universal,” not with regard to its white male protagonist Jerry Battle, but with regard to its calls for facing one’s family as the “absolutely other” as Emmanuel Levinas would define it. Jerry “declines the Real” when he encounters familial difficulties of which the beginning was the relationship with his late wife Daisy Han, who came to him as the destitute, denuded “face” of the other. It is, however, the additional death of the other that fundamentally disturbs Jerry’s “being” and changes his attitude towards his family and life. His daughter Theresa, disease stricken, sacrifices herself for her unborn baby, so she calls him to face the present of his family and the past related to Daisy’s death. Theresa’s substitutive death beyond Jerry’s knowledge and understanding ultimately invests him with the one responsible for the other, the subject “response-able” to the other’s order of “Thou shalt not kill.” A Levinasian way of reading Aloft will call its readers to face their family as a neighbor who needs their care and responsibility, and a persecutor who even demands their taken-for-granted place at home.
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