루쉬디의 『자정의 아이들』에 나타난 문화적 혼종성과 민족주의 문제

Salman Rushdie`s political vision may be understood as transcending an attachment to a particular nation in the sense that he not only debunks the `myth` of nation as a `natural and homogeneous` category but also celebrates himself as a `translated` being traversing India and Britain. Novels such as Midnight`s Children and Shame also clearly expose how dearly India and Paki-stan had to pay for the alleged national unity and cultural purity. Yet, faced with question like if critiquing of the nationalist slogan of national purity means upholding a transnational position, or If such a criticism intends to preach the uselessness or obsoleteness of nation and nationalism, one finds it hard to offer a conclusive answer. This paper aims at delineating Rushdie`s political position in Midnight`s Children and thus discussing a possible relationship between the writer`s position and nationalism. Rather than draw a definitive conclusion about the issue of whether or not he is a cosmopolitan or what kind of cosmopolitanism he upholds, this paper maps Rushdie`s politics by bringing to light its complexities and ambivalence. This mapping in carried out by means of focusing on how the theme of cultural hybridity, as later theorized by Homi Bhabha, is narrativized. This paper establishes a strong linkage between this supposedly `post-nationalist` text and the nationalism of the people by examining the author`s attitude towards the lower classes. A tentative conclusion of this paper is that Rushdie`s novel answers negatively the question of if post-foundational critiques of essentialist nationalism necessarily constitute a logical antinomy of nationalism.