코비드 19 이후 시점에서의 ‘민족적 알레고리’ 재조명: 살만 루시디의 『한밤의 아이들』에 나타난 민족주의 비판 읽기

초록

This article focuses on a critique of the concept of the nation as a “fate community.” While Fredric Jameson’s claim that all “third-world” texts must be read as national allegories is deeply problematic—particularly because it presumes a one-to-one correspondence between personal and national narratives—I employ “national allegory” as a critical lens through which to view nations as imagined communities. In this article, the term “national allegory” is broadly defined as the narrative strategy of aligning an individual’s fate with that of a nation. In this context, national allegory simultaneously invokes the notion of the nation as bound by a shared destiny and reveals that such national bonds are sustained through metaphorical and imaginary constructions. If national allegory is, in fact, a fictional device rather than a structural reality, this undermines Jameson’s framework and highlights that national unity is fundamentally reliant on collective imagination. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1980) exemplifies this critique by exposing the fictional and constructed nature of both national allegory and post-colonial nationalist discourse.

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