민주화의 역설과 한국소설의 종말론적 상상력 재고

Abstract

Recently, it has been debated about the issues on the relationships between the ‘literature and society’, ‘literature and politics’, ‘literature and community’ which has been ignored in the 1990’s Korea. It showed that the issues on the relationships between the literature and the reality needs to be reformed and reconstructed according to the change of the political conditions. Even though the world after the human(/the end of the world) was represented as ruins or a paradise by the apocalyptic imagination in Korean novel, apocalyptic imagination means actively intervene in the reality and literary practice in these days Korean reality. This research focused on the tendency that Korean novel contained the imagination of destruction, the image of degeneration, and the despair and emptiness. Based on this research, I reviewed that space for the possibility of political subject and restore/salvation of a new legislative principals/subjects (demos) through the apocalyptic imagination in novels. Specifically, I argued that requests for critically reviewing the boundaries of the community itself through the characteristics of the apocalyptic imagination in the novel of Park Min-gyu(박민규), Kim Sung-jung(김성중), Bae Ji-young(배지영) that is the end of consciousness without anger or despair, helplessness and passivity of the 'survivors'. Apocalyptic imagination in the novel of Pyun Hye-young(편혜영) was illuminated the complete fragmentation of the community due to the isolation and separation of an individual and then it showed paradoxically request for a new community caused by the absence of the political. Finally, I confirmed that necessity for decoding the message of 'strange world' which was a imagination of the end of the world through their novels.