The Politics of Suicide and Reterritorialization in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance

Sukjoo Sohn 한국영미어문학회 2014 한국영미어문학회 학술대회 발표논문집 Vol.2014 No.-

Salman Rushdie's Women: Strategic Transgressions and Agency

Sukjoo Sohn 한국영미어문학회 2013 영미어문학 Vol.- No.110

This paper discusses Salman Rushdie's five major novels to examine how the sexed or gendered codes of feminine passivity are called into question and even reversed in a subversive manner. In the process, the female body becomes no longer docile, feminine, or abject as a site of domesticity, sexual reproduction, patriarchy, colonial or nationalist discourse. I mainly draw on theories and ideas of Gayatri Spivak and Homi K. Bhabha whose concerns with the postcolonial predicament on the one hand and strategy on the other hand can contribute to the emergence of agency - the ability to resist or transform hegemonic power - on the part of women, so that they can become subjects of their history and experience. While I acknowledge the strategic use of essentialism in giving voice to the marginalized, I also stress that the politics of resistance and transgression operates in a relational manner, necessitating ethical behavior on the part of those in power as well as setting the limits of transgression.

Abject Body and Ethics of Resistance in Salman Rushdie’s Shame, Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey

Sukjoo Sohn 21세기영어영문학회 2013 영어영문학21 Vol.26 No.4

Suicide and Transformative Agency in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance

Sukjoo Sohn 한국영미어문학회 2015 영미어문학 Vol.- No.118

This paper explores the ways in which Maneck’s suicide in Rohinton Mistry’s novel, A Fine Balance works as a viable strategy for resisting and transforming the hegemonic order of postcolonial India. Rather than a mere sequence or repetition of events, Maneck’s death on the railway establishes a critical point of grounding and creates the metaphorical effects of a new community. The highlight of this research is to illustrate how oppression or abjection can be transformed into a mode of agency in the circulatory, recursive structure of transgression and protest. To that end, by arguing the importance of strategic essentialism coupled with everyday practice I emphasize the need to problematize the dominant concept of space and time so as to explore the potential reterritorialization of space and the repossession of time. Among others, I draw attention to how a carnivalesque gathering in Dina’s kitchen following Maneck’s suicide serves as a powerful metaphor for reasserting a place within the governing space. To explore suicide as a mode of resistance and transformation, I appropriate the theories of Bhaktin, Foucault, Bhabha, Ashcroft, and de Certeau.

내셔널리즘과 여성문제를 통해서 본 타고르의 『집과 세상』

손석주(Sukjoo Sohn) 한국영미어문학회 2017 영미어문학 Vol.- No.126

This paper examines how Tagore deals with nationalism and female issues like women’s freedom in his novel The Home and the World . His novel shows the negative effects of the spread of Western nationalism in colonial India, while at the same time criticizing patriarchal nationalism against women among independence movement leaders. This research is aimed at taking issue with the problems of nationalism and suggesting that the female creative power of shakti, in the Indian context, opposed Western imperialism and male-dominated oppression. The novel has been misunderstood or under appreciated, especially by Western critics like Gyorgy Lukacs. An accurate understanding of Tagore’s position on nationalism and women in the novel would help appreciate his pursuit of Western ideas and an alternative to a male-dominated world order.

제1차 세계 대전을 통해서 본 타고르의 작품 세계

손석주(Sukjoo Sohn) 한국영미어문학회 2018 영미어문학 Vol.- No.129

This paper examines how Orientalist views of Rabindranath Tagore have changed in the West due largely to World War I. Focusing on his Nationalism , this research shows that the normative perception of Tagore in the West took a sharp turn because of his political opposition to colonialism and imperialism. The West’s adoption of Tagore as part of its canon proved to be a failure as he showed his true colors by taking a critical stance against nationalism, a key feature of Western imperialism, especially during the first world war. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that Tagore had hoped to achieve a confluence of the East and West by embracing Western ideas in a selective manner, expecting a conflict of their narrow-minded interests to be eclipsed by the higher standards of humanity.

아룬다티 로이의 『지복의 성자』에 나타난 힌두내셔널리즘과 묘지의 헤테로토피아

손석주(Sukjoo Sohn) 한국영미어문학회 2021 영미어문학 Vol.- No.142

이번 연구는 아룬다티 로이의 『지복의 성자』에서 힌두 극우 정치와 근본주의의 횡포로 인해 차별당하고 소외된 히즈라(Hijra) , 불가촉천민, 그리고 반군 세력 등이 묘지와 같은 절망과 죽음의 공간을 재영토화하여 가능성의 공간으로 바꾸는 과정에 대하여 면밀히 살펴보고자 한다. 소설에서 드러나는 공간적 변화와 변형을 통한 행위능력의 가능성을 살펴보기 위해서, 먼저 미셀 푸코(Michel Foucault)의 공간 개념인 헤테로토피아(heterotopia)를 포스트식민 인도의 맥락에 맞게 전유해 볼 것이다. 이를 바탕으로 인도의 소수자들이 사회 안에 존재하지만 바깥에 위치한 역설적인 공간인 묘지를 어떻게 유토피아적 기능을 수행하는 현실화된 장소, 즉 헤테로토피아로 만듦과 동시에 가능성의 공간으로 탈바꿈시키는지를 구체적으로 살펴보고자 한다. 또한, 푸코의 생명권력 이론이 지니는 한계를 명확하게 인식하고 보완하기 위해서 조르주 아감벤(Giorgio Agamben)의 호모 사케르(Homo Sacer) 개념을 전유하여 법질서 밖에 있는 소외된 이들이 지속적인 생명의 위협과 억압의 상태에서 벗어나기 위하여 어떻게 연대하고 저항하는지를 살펴보고자 한다. 이는 이들이 모여든 묘지가 단순히 위안이나 도피의 공간이 아니라, 힌두 지배 공간의 바깥에서 소외되고 억압받는 소수자들을 위한 재영토화와 저항의 가능성을 지닌 행위능력의 공간임을 보여주기 위한 것이다. Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, her second novel in 20 years after the Booker prize winner The God of Small Things, shows how such marginalized space as cemetery can subvert the hegemonic space of Hindu nationalism prevalent against minorities in India. This paper appropriates Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to examine the ways in which cemetery countervails the Hindu hegemonic space to create an alternative space where minorities can live in solidarity. It also explores Giorgio Agamben’s concept of Homo Sacer to discuss how the downtrodden can survive oppressive power like rising Hindu nationalism with the aid of reterritorialization through heterotopia. In this process, the paper demonstrates that such paradoxical concepts as Homo Sacer and heterotopia can be used to raise the possibility of creating a counter space where Muslims, Dalits, Hijras, and guerrillas living on the edge of India can be united in their solidarity against hegemonic Hindu nationalism.

인도 영어 소설의 번역 전략: 언어 혼성과 교체의 문제를 중심으로

손석주(Sohn, Sukjoo),이명이(Lee, Myung-e) 새한영어영문학회 2015 새한영어영문학 Vol.57 No.1

This paper examines the complexities of cultural and linguistic diversity in Indian English literature, suggesting the ways in which it can be better translated into the Korean language. Focusing on the dynamics of code-mixing and code-switching, it stresses the importance of cultural translation in terms of the relations of power between the hegemonic language of English and the vernacular languages of India in a postcolonial context. As an example, the paper takes the Korean-language translation of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things in order to examine the effect of translation in conjunction with the shifting relationship between the English language and the vernacular Malayalam. Ultimately, it proposes the strategic use of demestication and foreignization for the practice of translation by appropriating Lawrence Venuti’s concept of the translator’s invisibility. The limits and possibilities of cultural translation are explored in the context of ideas by Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, and Salman Rushdie, while the paper draws on the theories of Susan Bassnett and Lawrence Venuti, among others. This paper demonstrates that Indian English literature is a subject of constant negotiations for cultural translation whereby it is possible to counter the homogenization of difference, the minimization of alterity, and the hegemonic ownership of language.

번역불가능성과 탈소유화: 새로운 지구적 세계문학의 가능성

손석주(Sohn, Sukjoo) 새한영어영문학회 2014 새한영어영문학 Vol.56 No.1

This paper questions the hegemonic construction of world literature, suggesting the ways in which it can be reconstituted in a critique of translatability and ownability. It examines how the failure of translation and possession can contribute to decentering the hegemonic global system and paving the way for a new world literature open to sharing in difference. Ultimately, it proposes the strategic use of untranslatability and dispossession for the practices of a new world literature in conjunction with Gayatri Spivak’s concept of planetarity. To that end, it problematizes and develops the definition of world literature proposed by David Damrosch to discuss ways of looking at untranslatability and dispossession from the perspectives of resistance and transformative agency. The limits and possibilities of world literature are explored in the context of texts by Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry, R. K. Narayan, Lewis Nkosi, Edgar Allan Poe, and anonymous collective writers, while I draw upon the theories of Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Bill Ashcroft, Franco Moretti, among others. The questions raised in Emily Apter’s controversial new book Against World Literature are also examined in a critical manner. This paper aims to demonstrate that the desirable ‘world’ of world literature is a place of constant negotiations where it is possible to counter the homogenization of difference, the minimization of alterity, and the exclusive ownership of literature.

아미타브 고시의 『그림자 선』에 나타난 인도 내셔널리즘과 포스트식민 윤리

손석주(Sukjoo Sohn) 한국영미어문학회 2023 영미어문학 Vol.- No.148

아미타브 고시의 『그림자 선』은 인도가 1차 분리독립에서 2차 분리독립으로 이행하는 과정에 벵골 지방에서 발생한 1964년 폭동과 그 여파를 전면에 내세우고 있다. 이번 연구에서는 이러한 역사적 배경을 바탕으로 내셔널리즘과 코즈모폴리터니즘의 이항대립적 관계에 초점을 맞추는 대신에 이러한 개념에 근본적인 의문을 제기하고 재정의함은 물론이고 새로운 포스트식민 윤리의 필요성을 제기한다. 포스트식민 맥락에서 등장인물들의 윤리적 행동을 비교함으로써 이번 연구는 대안적 상상과 윤리적 삶에 근거한 코즈모폴리터니즘이 제1세계와 제3세계의 화해와 연대의 가능성을 어떻게 보여주고 있는지를 구체적으로 살펴보고 있다. This paper examines the ways in which Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines portrays the lives of its main characters in terms of ethics and freedom in the aftermath of the partition of India in 1947 and the partition of Pakistan in 1971. Instead of focusing on the binary opposition between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, this research aims to redefine the notion of them, thus raising the need for a new concept of ethics against the background of the historical events in India. By comparing the main characters’ ethical practices in the postcolonial context, the paper shows how cosmopolitanism based on alternative imagination and ethical life can contribute to bringing about the possibility of reconciliation and solidarity between the first world and the third world.