이룰 수 없는 사랑 이야기:기의를 통해『주저하는 근본주의자』읽기

Abstract

Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is on one level an “incomplete” love story between Pakistani man Changez and American woman Erica, but on a figurative level it allegorically portrays the ideological and hegemonic conflict between two worlds: the United States and the Middle East. In order to manifest the latter interpretation, it is necessary to borrow the concept of “sign” from structuralist and deconstructive criticisms. As structuralists like Ferdinand de Saussure reveal, language is sign, and each sign is dissected into a signifier and a signified. However deconstructive critics like Jacques Derrida argue that a signified of a sign will become another signifier and consequently produces different, multiple signifieds. They assert, therefore, the ultimate signified is continuously postponed, which Derrida calls différance. Likewise, Hamid’s signs, which appear in the names of characters and the company where Changez is employed, conceive multiple signifieds. For example, Chris, Erica’s late boyfriend, could signify Christopher Columbus the explorer and Christ the savior; Changez, Genghis Kan the conqueror; Erica, one ruler and America; Underwood Samson, the church builder and Samson the judge. Examining signifieds in the fiction, this paper scrutinizes the perception induced from the multiple signifieds and traces différance. And in order to contextualize the signifieds, it encapsulates the strife history of Pakistan and the hegemonic intervention of the United States. This is a study of parole, the surface phenomena, in Hamid’s monologue fiction.