프라이데이의 라캉적 몸과 역사담론의 재구축:J. M. 쿳시의 『포』

This study aims to examine the (im)possibility of Friday's speaking and the reconstruction of historiographic discourse in relation to the helpless silence of Friday, who is depicted as the colonized ‘Other’ in J. M. Coetzee's postmodern text, Foe (1986). Unlike Friday in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), Coetzee’s version is portrayed as a man who cannot speak and remains silent throughout. Hence, African Friday seems to be rendered as a silent colonized, deprived of the right to speak his language. However, he is described as ‘substantial body’ by Susan, one of the main characters in the novel, and his silence suggests that his speech act cannot be expressed using the symbolic language of the European colonial empire. For this reason, it can be argued that Friday himself implies the ‘Real’ in terms of the Lacanian perspective. A number of critics have discussed this silence, many of whom concluded it has been purposely used as resistance to imperialist discourse or a symbol of the powerless subaltern. According to them, Coetzee rejects such discourse found in Robinson Crusoe through Friday's cut tongue and his absence of ability to communicate in English, the imperial language. However, the silence of Friday does not simply mean resistance or erasure of history; rather, it represents a type of postmodern reconstruction of historiographic discourse, i.e, rewriting history. Drawing on the perspectives of Lacan and Barthes, this article explores what Coetzee intends to show through Friday’s silence, unlike Defoe’s depiction of this character, and how his silence signifies a postmodern historiographic reconstruction.