글로벌 시대의 서발턴: 제3세계 여성난민들

Abstract

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid and How I Became a North Korean by Krys Lee are refugee novels set in different regions and cultures; however, they both expose the subaltern status of refugee women from the Third World. The protagonists of both works are two refugee women, Nadia and Jangmi, who, as women, are hopeful for sexual liberation and the liberation of the First World. However, while they are only viewed as vulnerable subjects and victims of local patriarchy, their other identity as refugees from the Third World lacks agency and suffers from alienation when they are subjected to prejudices against refugees. In other words, the new society is an ambivalent space for them that, on the one hand, affords them as women to enjoy greater sexual liberation and freedom than the society they came from. On the other hand, as refugees from Third World countries, however, they are expected to remain mute in the face of discrimination, prejudiced language, and hostile looks. To avoid experiencing worst-case scenarios such as deportation, their best option is to express inexhaustible gratitude for what they have been given and strive to be flawlessly assimilated subjects, while ignoring their refugee identity, which suffers from injustice. Being exposed to the dilemma of having to live with their divided selves and being unable to speak about their problems, Nadia and Jangmi share the question Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak raised about the Third World woman: Can the subaltern speak? This paper endeavors to contextualize the refugee experiences of Nadia and Jangmi in relation to Spivak’s question about the Third World woman. The paper will then contend that refugee women from the Third World are invisible subalterns as the symbol of the world’s inequality which still exists in the so-called more equally globalized world.