earticle

영어

Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084, arguably the first novel on the Naxalite armed movement in India, sheds light on the agency of motherhood and examines the possibility of forming ethical relationship between human beings regardless of class and ideology. This paper examines the ways in which a mother of a young Naxalite guerilla gains a new sense of motherhood and protests the governing system as she comes to understand the cause of her son's death as well as her alienation. A series of her interrogations shows a way of countering the hegemonic discourse of the ruling elite and police, which, in turn, makes it possible to bring back his son’s name in place of the corpse number 1084. This paper also pays keen attention to her scream of pain, which seemingly stems from the bursting of her appendix, but is actually an alternative way of calling for the establishment of human ethics for underprivileged others like Naxalite guerrillas.