판타지(Fantasy)와 스펙터(Spectre) 개념을 통한 『로드 짐』 읽기 = Reading Lord Jim Based on Slavoj Žižek's "Fantasy" and "Spectre"

This paper examines the imperial ideology represented in Joseph Conrad's work, Lord Jim focusing on Slavoj Žižek's theory of reality as constructed fantasy, and investigates how Conrad's Lord Jim discloses the contradiction of the ideology. The nineteenth-century Western European ideology at the root of Euro-Centrism and humanism, which Conrad often focused on, had a significant impact on forming the discourse of imperialism. The Inconvenient ghosts roaming in Conrad's Lord Jim, which Žižek defines as Spectre, are the examples of the most important essence oppressed by ideology, returning in the guise of spectral apparition. This paper investigates the main character Jim's feeling of guilt haunting him ceaselessly including the narrator Marlow and the compulsory repetitive action caused by it after jumping from the Patna and abandoning the passengers. I argue that "One of us" repeated by the narrator Marlow as a leitmotif represents the society of seaman and British imperialism at the same time, ironically the people who try to conceal the discrepancy and contradiction existing in the British imperialist society.