Choi Namsun`s Narratives of Nation-buildings

학위논문(박사) --서울대학교 대학원 :국어국문학과 (국문학전공),2009.2.Docto

이상의 「종생기」에 나타난 사랑, 죽음, 예술

This essay aims at overcoming the two main interpretations of Yi Sangs ecriture. One is the biographical interpretation which reduces Yi Sangs literature into the documents of his despair and fear and the other is the semiological interpretation which makes his texts a hollow art isolated from life or an abstract play of signs. However, inscription of proper name(Yi Sang) in his texts is not any reference to the author"s presumed identity but a kind of strategy for disrupting Is unified identity and dissolving epistemological representationalism and literary realism. Yi Sangs texts play variations on the theme of nonidentical identity by motives of the mirror, the mask, the double and broken bodies, all of which also disturb the layers of narration. The criticism of representationalism leads to the cognitive way of sign-decoding and the layer of narrative of Yi Sangs texts can, thus, be summarized in some struggles for decoding the violent signs(Oedipus family, modernity and fascism, love, death) which are emitted from the obscure world. Especially, Writing on Death is a peak of Yi Sang"s literature because it envelops love and death in art. His viewpoint of art, condensed into the allusion of Soneynhaeng(少年行), implicates a paradox that one can"t reach art not by wasting his/her life and, in turn, the essence of life which he/she can glimpse only in art, is already dissipated in life itself. Moreover, Yi Sang has made persistent efforts to affirm both life and death by striking pose for suicide and accomplishes amor fati through art(Writing on Death) which overcomes Death and comes repeatedly across life, the world, and the Real

최남선의 수신(修身)담론과 근대 위인전기의 탄생

Choi Namsun"s biographical narratives in Sonyun(『少年』) and Cheongchun(『靑春』) show us the continuous transition from the premodern "hero narratives" to the modern "great men narratives", unlike the established hypothesis that the former extinguished in the late 1900"s and was succeeded to by the historical novel"s 1930"s. Confronting the loss of the national power of the Daehan Empire, Choi couldn"t expect any more the appearance of national heroes who would rescue the country, which dissolved the form of the hero narratives in Sonyun(『少年』). Instead, Choi counted on the discourse of moral training of "the Youth Association(靑年學友會)" to subjectify "the People"(國民) without the country and focused on the virtue of "endeavour"(務實力行 or 堅忍力作 or 努力). "Endeavour" was first considered the only way to the object, "the independence" of the country but the value of the virtue was later elevated to the foundational principle of the civilization, the universe and even "life"(生命) itself. In this course, "national heroes" of the premodern narratives changed "great men" of modern biographical narratives which could examplify the value of endeavour. However, "endeavour" which had been cut off from the object, the independence of the country, could easily used as the instrument for the training the diligently-working colonized or for the success of any ego-centric individuals in the 1920"s

1930년대 후반 장편소설 연구 : 서사구조와 정체성의 관계를 중심으로

학위논문(석사)--서울대학교 대학원 :국어국문학과 현대문학전공,2000.Maste

Autonomy and Refugees: Korean Chinese Farmers and Manchurian travelogues from mid-1920s to early 1930s

This essay examines the Korean Chinese immigrants in Manchuria from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, focusing on colonial Korean writers Manchurian travelogues and the historical situations at that time. Starting with an oral history of Hak Hyeon Choi who had resided in a collective village of the Korean Chinese set up by the Japanese colonial authority, I try to critically reexamine academic trend of Korean literary studies on the subaltern Koreans in Manchuria: indiscriminate identification of the Korean Chinese and the South Korean nation, idealistic approach to the nation, and incomplete understanding of the Korean Chinese situations as an immigrant nation in-between states. As an alternative to both interpretive schemes about the Koreans in Manchuria during the colonial period, resistance or pro-Japanese collaboration and collusion between the colonizer and the colonized, I demonstrate, first, their consistent orientation for autonomy either outside or inside a state, then, the frustration of the autonomist line and their becoming refugees, and, finally, their voluntary reversion to the Japanese rule. Especially, this essay focuses on the concrete, historical situations of the subaltern Korean Chinese, who were violently suppressed by all of the three armed justices: the assimilative pressure from the Chinese government, the imperial Japans expansion into Manchuria and the left-wing terrorism against the Japanese imperialism. This subaltern perspective leads us to an open question about the paradoxical structure of the modern world where the refugees exposed to extralegal violence are forced to voluntarily aspire to the government of any state for their security