재현의 윤리: 제스처 라이프의 종군위안부에 대한 기억과 애도

Abstract

Jeboon YuThe existing social discourses and media surrounding the Korean 'comfort' women of World War II have deformed and stereotyped these women as the 'social other,' depending on the ideology of nationalism and government policy, neglecting their individuality and subjectivity. This study pursues the ethics of representation embedded in Chang-rae Lee's depiction of Korean 'comfort' women during World War II in his novel, A Gesture Life. Contrary to historical narratives which record the 'comfort' women's history and leave them as 'social others' with the passage of time, the novel's major interest is not only in the representation of the Korean 'comfort' women, but also in their effects on the comtemporary and individual life of the narrator and protagonist, Hata. In a certain way, Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life echoes Gayatri Spivak, who saw in literary text an alternative, rhetorical place for a subaltern woman's history; K, the Korean 'comfort' woman in the novel, is attempted to be a 'speaking subject' as well as 'acting subject.' She also functions as an individual with multiple representations within the text: a lover, Korea, and the narrator's lost other self. Despite the author's zeal for representation, K, however, is not completely free from the stereotype of a Joseon woman under patriarchal Confucian ideology. K's representation is mainly focused on her relation to the male narrator's 'bildung.' Despite certain limitations in drawing K as a subject, however, it is clear that the novel conveys an ethics of representation which evokes a responsibility of memory and appropriate mourning for the lost history of Korean 'comfort' women of World War II.