『제스처 라이프』에 나타난 `차별`과 `차이`의 징후적 읽기

Most previous studies on A Gesture Life focused on illuminating the role and significance of Kkutaeh, the Korean comfort woman, whom Hata runs across at a military camp in the Burmese jungle. For instance, Carroll Hamilton argues that the return of Kkutaeh as a traumatic subject disrupts Hata`s nationalist narrative, causing the protagonist`s eventual failure at national enfranchisement. However, this paper focuses on Hata`s relationship with Bedley Run, the sleepy suburban white town, in which the protagonist settles down right after immigration to the US. The racial/racist nature of Bedley Run has not received due critical attention, although a few studies on the novel saw Hata`s gestures as a survival tactic deployed against the hostile environment of his new host society. This paper, resorting to Pierre Macherey`s thesis on symptomatic reading, exposes what Hata, the narrator/protagonist, hides from his readers concerning his status in his much-beloved town; and it also explores the subversive significance of Hata`s ethnic memories. The aim of this study is, after all, to map both the subversive possibilities and the limitations of Hata’s immigrant narrative as a bildungsroman.