동양과 서양 사이: 『한중록』, 『붉은 왕세자빈』, 초문화적 문화소통의 한계

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the problematics of transcultural communication through a study of Drabble’s The Red Queen. Enthralled by Lady Hyegyong’s memoirs, Drabble appoints herself as a writer of “a fifth memoir,” declaring it a transcultural work demonstrating that there should be universal and essential values against muticultural tolerance and postmodern relativism. As this study argues, however, Drabble’s approach is very problematic. Her reconstruction repeats the liberal humanist feminism. Drabble’s Hyegyong is a female champion of individual subject who never loses the universal, unique, and essential self. Drabble’s transculturalism gives priority to the universal that goes beyond the particular of different cultures. For her, culture is something contingent to be avoided for a universal whole. This assumption permeates the way she represents Korea. Drabble’s Korea falls prey to easy generalization and tourist sightseeing. As in the episode of adoption, Drabble’s cosmopolitanism reproduces the imperial views of the West toward the East, in which the East is seen as the other, as objects of patronizing, benevolence, and redemption, by the West.