수잔 최의 『외국인 학생』과 초민족적 공간

Abstract

Susan Choi's The Foreign Student is a love story between Chang, a Korean student, hence "the foreign student" from an American perspective, and Katherine, an American woman. Chang is an outcast from the Korean society with the background of his father's collaboration with the Japanese colonial rule in Korea and his own collaboration with the American rule of Korea in the so called postcolonial Korea. The status of being an outcast is also true of Katherine because she is branded as a fallen woman in her community with her maintenance of an illegitimate relationship with her father's friend and the love affair with the Asian man, Chang. This situation is an apt case of Homi Bhabha's notoin of "DissemiNaiton" which explains the disruptive operation of marginal groups to the official and dominant discourse of nationalism. The space and time in which Chang and Katherine share the mutual affection coming from their common sense of being outcasts in their community can be a third space in Bhabha's term. The third space's specific location to secure their love in the future is in the Gulf Coast and their house is in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. The love between a Korean outcast and an American outcast and the location of the love at the transnational border of the first world America and the third world Mexico suggest that the transnational third space constructed by Chang and Katherine is the stake to secure their minority identities which challenge the dominant nationalist discourses.