미국 베트남 전쟁 소설의 주체와 재현 문제: 비엣 탄 응웬의 『동반자』 연구

Abstract

The Sympathizer provides a turning point in the literary representation of the Vietnam War in the US. As a Vietnamese-American, Nguyen attempts to describe how the Vietnamese experienced and understood the war differently from Americans. Furthermore, as a sympathizer of the North Vietnamese Communists, the protagonist shows the perspectives of the Communists, not to mention those of the indigenous South Vietnamese. One of the themes the Sympathizer deals with is the question of the subaltern subjects and the possibility of their representations. The protagonist participates in the making of a Vietnam War film in Hollywood as a consultant of the film director, who is a white male American. From his observation and discussion with the director, the protagonist realizes that the American film director appropriates the field of representation and that the specificity of the Vietnam War experiences of the Vietnamese is totally erased in the film. The protagonist ultimately succeeds in tacitly inserting traces of the Vietnamese presences within the filmic space, thereby seeking ways to alter the course of representation appropriated by the director. If Gayatri Spivak raised the question of representing the subaltern subjects in the third world, critiquing the European scholars’sanctioned ignorance towards them as evidenced by Foucault and Deleuze, Nguyen seeks ways to expand her notion in the form of fiction through the protagonist’s critical views and actions. Especially, the similarity between Spivak and Nguyen reveals itself when the two juxtapose Marx’s notion of ‘representation’ and ‘being represented’ with the 20th century reality, in which the symbolic subjectivity, power, and appropriation play more significant roles than ever before.