한국문학의 금욕주의자들－자율성을 둘러싼 사랑과 자본의 경쟁－

Abstract

This article argues that “love” and “capital” compete against each other to win a hegemonic position over the discourse of an “autonomous modern individual” in Korean modern literary history. It is well known that “love” as a spontaneous feeling was used as the main motif to mediate the notion of “the autonomous modern individual” in modern Korean literary history. “Capital,”on the other hand, which was usually considered to be a typical hindrance to true love, was in fact the most likely rival to “love” on account of the autonomy of the individual. While “love” seeks eternal inseparability, “money” is exchanged for and with everything. Many works from the early modern period compulsively represented this conflict in an “either love or money” manner. Colonial nationalism, which usually transcends personal desires to concentrate instead on “the big cause,” was often used as a solution to this problem. The ascetic heroes in well-known novels such as Lee Kwang Soo’s The Soil, Lee Gi Young’s Homeland, and Shim Hoon’s Evergreen, who sacrificed everything to be pioneers for poor peasants, can be psychoanalyzed as wanting to avoid becoming an object of desire by others, which means paradoxically to be a replaceable being. The method of describing their “Comradeship Love” problematically shows that their seeking a type of comradeship love is not based on what they want to do but on instead what they do not want to do. To find their true lovers, it appears that they must make a very long and difficult detour. They voluntarily choose city girls, who are transformed from sophisticated and urban figures to strenuous workers. In a sense, their lovers are heroes themselves with a hint of fetish as transformed bodies.