『코리오레이너스』: 국가주의의 비극

Abstract

Moon Gyu KimCoriolanus dramatizes a problematic nature of the nationalism ideology, focusing mainly on the relationship between soldier hero and his patriotic mother. Coriolanus is reared by a supremely patriotic mother who is subjected by the dominant ideology, and is also instrument to it. As a result, he has accepted his identity and his name as Rome's defender, identifying his personal honor with the honor of Rome. Yet, paradoxically, his very conception of himself as the quintessence of roman virtus ends by placing him opposition to Rome because of the inherent contradictions of such enterprise of the self. But he cannot simply separate himself from the world of Rome; the intensity of his identification with Rome and with his mother forces him to come back to destroy his homeland to which he is still attached. Therefore, his new project of forging new name by destroying his homeland proves to be a self destruction or a betrayal of himself. He cannot become one with his homeland by destroying it. But he cannot realize this truth until he face his mother who represents herself as Rome's defender instead of him. And finally he came to recognize that it was her maternal power, assigned her by the state, that locked him into the fatal contradictions of his identity. In several prominent reversals, the mother who lives only through her son survives while he is sacrificed so that she and the state with which she is identified may live. Therefore, it is not a tragedy of motherhood but a tragedy of nationalism. On the other hand, as a traitor, with no possibility of finding an identity either in homeland or in enemy state, Coriolanus is condemned to remain a kind of nothing forever. In this context, the tragedy of nationalism demonstrates that the creation of an autonomous subjectivity which is the project of modernity is impossible.