뼈에 새겨진 진실 혹은 기억

Memory Inscribed in Bones: Examining a Diasporic Perspective in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost

Focusing on Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost, set in Sri Lanka during the late 1980s and early 90s, this article tries to re-examine the current meaning and status of diaspora. In the novel, Anil Tissera, a forensic pathologist, who has returned to her homeland after fifteen years’ absence, investigates alleged human rights abuses during the civil war. While describing the ways in which a diaspora sponsored by international human rights organization intervenes into the internal conflicts of the once colonial nation, Ondaatje suggests that the international interests could lie behind the seemingly inter-ethnic conflicts and that the perspective of diaspora, native yet foreign, can easily be manipulated in the complicating nexus of socio-political issues in Sri Lanka. Inviting questions about the controversial role of diaspora in the age of globalization, the writer suggests an “archaeological understanding” of the local, which underlines a proper understanding of the complex nature of the place. Interestingly, Ondaatje relates the archaeological understanding to the presence of ghost: both archaeology and ghost unbury what is buried. Through the “odd pairing” of an forensic pathologist Anil and an archaeologist Sarath, the novel pays particular attention to the ways in which a diaspora engages in his/her homeland unearthing what is lost in history.