차이의 문학사와 작은 근대성

Abstract

This study explores other possibilities for history of literature throughcritical understanding of it. There are many cases of literary that attemptto compose the modern Korean literature in a historical way. However,the conventional modern (contemporary) literary history seems unable toescape from the two strong theories:〈 New Literary History〉of Lim Hwaand〈 History of Korean Literature〉of Kim Hyeon and Kim Yunshik. Fora new paradigm to be established in literary history, there has to be areflective point to fundamentally criticize the common structuraltopography of these two theories. In the literary history of both Lim and Kim, literary product cannot bea dynamic element in history but the socioeconomic factors surroundingliterature deducts its modernity. Its premise is that socioeconomic modernelements precede historical narrative and those elements determined thecurrent of literary history. The literary history that does not directlyquestion the institutional and aesthetic system including the question offormation of modern genres, cannot help but rely on the masternarrative, that is, socioeconomic modernity and philosophy of history. It means modernity is at the center of this ideology. If so, it is important to understand the scope of modernity within the scope of‘event’apart from generalization and homogenization. To understandthe modern time as an event means looking at it as a space whereindividuality is revealed, instead of converting it as a transcendentalschema and exemplary case. Rather than the structural discussion inmaster narrative that historical facts in literary history are all eitherpursuing a stage or short of a stage, it helps understand different andindividual modernity. Literary history is not a story that follows asingular direction but a space that reveals the specificity of ‘differentmodernity.’Now countless and small, plural literary histories could be proposed ata different level from the predominant history. The reason for calling theliterary history that deviates from one literary history a“ literary historyof difference”is because it reveals modernity as a difference rather thanuniversal modernity and is based on the difference of individual texts. This perception reveals spaces of unpredictable transitions in literaryhistory without structuralizing it. These points of transitions form thehistorical topography surrounding the question of‘ small modernity’andcan be called‘ smaller literary histories.’