The Mysterious Case of Suki Kim's The Interpreter
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12469188 |
|---|---|
| Authors | erin Khuê Ninh (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 193-217 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Asian American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1096-8598 • E-ISSN: 1097-2129 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jaas.2017.0016 |
| OpenAlex | W2626231285 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 3 |
The protagonist of Suki Kim's mystery The Interpreter has been taken for a bad subject of various stripes. This article, however, proposes that readings of this novel that look not primarily at but through its execution of mystery, at a political subject whose desires are presumed to be known, will overlook the metatextual commentary of the narrative—that level that operates, precisely and exclusively, via its form. A sustained reading of protagonist Suzy Park foremost as a detective, from the standpoint of (racial) form, this argument holds that where Kim has transformed rather than merely resisted the formulas of our expectations, her readers have not necessarily caught on. Working with Slavoj Žižek's The Sublime Object of Ideology and theories of cynicism, the article argues that the "real subject matter" of Kim's mystery comes into view only as we realize how little its putative content—its solution—truly matters. The most stunning thing our detective does in this story is something she does not explain at all
Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Art · Epistemology · Interpreter · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Object (grammar · Politics · Reading (process · Subject (documents · Computer Science · Crime and Detective Fiction Studies · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |