이문구 소설의 ‘실패한 기획’, ‘레트로토피아’

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is not to explain the past space reproduced in Lee Moon-gu's novel, that is, the shape of the rural or hometown itself, but to reveal how to imagine the shape of the past. He does not describe the dissolution of rural areas, migration, the movement of subjects falling into urban slums, and absolute poverty in rural areas as homogeneous or fixed landscapes. First of all, "Hometown" in Lee Moon-gu's novel has a unique past shape, not a tearful idyllic landscape or an ideal space for any utopia. In the background of this past shape, there is a critical writer's consciousness that distrusts communalism or collective social movements, rejects obedience to reason or social norms, and is wary of all collective consciousness. The 'nostalgia' that made this possible is directly connected to hope for the future, not just the form of the past. Lee Moon-gu's novel crosses the boundary between the utopian desire and the retrotopia placed inside the character who did not adapt to the changes in the social structure of the time, such as farmers, urban poor, and workers in the 1970s. Particularly, attention is paid to retrotopia in order to get off the stratum of schematic interpretation that sees Lee Moon-gu's novel as 'a search for meaning for hometowns and rural areas rooted in national sentiment', whether positive or negative, at the level of modern discourse. What is clear is that the retrotopia reproduced in Lee Moon-gu's novel stems from a desire to escape from the repressed reality. The ideal space he remembered or recalled in the past, the rural areas and hometowns that provided psychological stability, are now spaces that no longer exist or never existed. Therefore, it can be said that the rural areas and hometowns of the 1970s in Lee Moon-gu's novel are the world of retrotopia itself created by the author.