"The Materiality of Trauma in Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life." Modern Studies in English Language & Literature 51.1(2007): This essay is an attempt to show how the materiality of trauma appears in Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life. According to Ži&# ...

"The Materiality of Trauma in Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life." Modern Studies in English Language & Literature 51.1(2007): This essay is an attempt to show how the materiality of trauma appears in Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life. According to Žižek, I define trauma as some undead remainder which persists as the obscene/monstrous spectral 'living dead'. Traumatic repetition means that the subject misery and suffering comes from within and any interpretive approach will never bring a fixed meaning to what is essential in traumatic experience. Hata (the protagonist and narrator of the novel) tried to disavow his traces of trauma and appropriate KKutaeh(a comfort woman) and Sunny(his adopted daughter) to construct his successful subjectivity, only to fail. But in the final scene, Hata seems to acknowledge his status as a contaminated figure, opening some ethical ground.