CHAPTER 4
THE INTERSTITIAL PLIGHT OF A MINORITY SUBJECT AND THE TRAUMA OF
 SOCIAL ABJECTION IN CHANG-RAE LEE'S NATIVE SPEAKER


 The Interstitial Ethnic Subject and Abjection

 Loss is inseparable from trauma. Loss is a painful experience that implies losing

part of the self and some integral self-experiences, which in some cases causes an

irreversible rift in one's life and self-narrative. Whether the loss comes in the form of a

death of a loved one or losing one's ideal in moments of disillusionment, a close

examination of the psychosocial dimension of loss shows that whereas not all losses are

traumatic, traumatic events inevitably involve a significant loss difficult to accept and

acknowledge in the first place and even more difficult to cope with and recover from to a

certain degree. "Traumatic events," as the psychologist John H. Harvey asserts,

"fundamentally are about loss," and a major traumatic loss consequently causes a drastic

identity change.251 Profoundly rupturing and disempowering in nature, a traumatic loss

strips one, to explain it in Kohut's term of self psychology, of the selfobject, which, as

part of the self, provides one with a nurturing and protective psychological environment

and sustains one through the vicissitudes of life challenges. If the selfobjects surrounding

one keep one stable and secure against the unforeseeable contingencies of life, then a

traumatic loss, by severing the tie to those selfobjects, makes one feel forlorn, suddenly

exposed, and quite helpless without the familiar and empathic milieu.

 In this chapter, I will explore the psychological impact of cross-cultural passage on

minority ethnic subjects by examining their multiple losses, which, often