대항문화에 대항하기: 바라티 무커지의 『내게 맡겨』 (Countering the Counterculture : Bharati Mukherjee’s Leave It to Me)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국영미문학페미니즘학회
· 수록지 정보 : 영미문학페미니즘 / 22권 / 2호 / 147 ~ 177페이지
· 저자명 : 이선진

초록

This paper examines the ways in which Bharati Mukherjee’s mythical writing of Leave It to Me critically engages with and deconstructs the myths of the 60s counterculture as part of her larger project of redefining America and its history. Drawing upon the Hindu myth of the warrior goddess Devi and the Greek myth of Electra as interpretive frames of the novel, Mukherjee transforms the protagonist-narrator Debby/Devi’s journey to San Francisco in search of her origin and identity into a critical reinterpretation of the counterculture’s liberalism and its engagement with Asia in reaction to the nation’s exertion of its state sovereignty beyond its territory onto the foreign shores of Vietnam. As Devi finds out more about her mother and observes her peers in the counterculture, she increasingly develops a critical eye on the darker side of the countercultural young people, including their self-indulgence, irresponsibility, and their quick move into the consumer-capitalist “Establishment.” Mukherjee extends her demythologizing take on the counterculture’s mystification and manipulation of the Indian religious culture to justify its hedonist lifestyle with a suggestion that it is the other side of the same mirror of America’s Orientalism that demonizes its Vietnamese others by representing them as essentially different from whatever is American. Rejecting a celebration of America as a home of progress and liberation, Mukherjee exposes the counterculture’s rebellion against mainstream America gone awry by debunking the nostalgic, romanticized myths of the sixties counterculture dominant in popular imagination.

영어초록

This paper examines the ways in which Bharati Mukherjee’s mythical writing of Leave It to Me critically engages with and deconstructs the myths of the 60s counterculture as part of her larger project of redefining America and its history. Drawing upon the Hindu myth of the warrior goddess Devi and the Greek myth of Electra as interpretive frames of the novel, Mukherjee transforms the protagonist-narrator Debby/Devi’s journey to San Francisco in search of her origin and identity into a critical reinterpretation of the counterculture’s liberalism and its engagement with Asia in reaction to the nation’s exertion of its state sovereignty beyond its territory onto the foreign shores of Vietnam. As Devi finds out more about her mother and observes her peers in the counterculture, she increasingly develops a critical eye on the darker side of the countercultural young people, including their self-indulgence, irresponsibility, and their quick move into the consumer-capitalist “Establishment.” Mukherjee extends her demythologizing take on the counterculture’s mystification and manipulation of the Indian religious culture to justify its hedonist lifestyle with a suggestion that it is the other side of the same mirror of America’s Orientalism that demonizes its Vietnamese others by representing them as essentially different from whatever is American. Rejecting a celebration of America as a home of progress and liberation, Mukherjee exposes the counterculture’s rebellion against mainstream America gone awry by debunking the nostalgic, romanticized myths of the sixties counterculture dominant in popular imagination.

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