한국 한센병과 가족이라는 장치 - 전통 시기 설화에서 근대 소설로의 이행 과정에 관한 몇 가지 검토

Abstract

Women in Korean leprosy (Hansen’s disease) tales played a role as an active healer, but a complete sacrifice of the apparatus called family. The family in the tales was a apparatus which gave a birth to a sacrificially virtuous woman and valued man’s health to keep and preserve the family. The sacrifice of a woman and health of a man emphasized in the tales can be said to be a partner with the patriarchy in the Chosun era. The woman in the tales sacrificed herself to heal her husband’s leprosy, while 『Yeosundam Jeon』, novel published during the period of transition into the modern times shows a common man who got a status upgrade by performing good deeds to a maid leper, which is an evidence of some change in the status of leprosy and family according to the social change during the period of late Chosun. In Kim Jeong-han’s short novel, 「Oksimi」 published in 1936, we can never see the one represented as a woman of integrity, fidelity and virtue who was described in existing leprosy tales. The novel treats the wife who dedicated herself to her husband with leprosy like a survival of olden days. Since modern times, those who have Hansen’s disease gradually have been moved out of the family apparatus. And now the apparatus called the hospital and the government is substituted for family. Modern hospitals and the government strengthened the policy which isolated the lepers in order to protect those who are the healthy, the society, and the government, not to treat the Hansen’s disease and protect lepers’ life. The hospital and governmen were a violent system which captured the “bare life”, lepers into their planned apparatus. The “Homo Sacer” came to the basis for the bio-power system in colonial modernity. Our society surrounded by the bio-power system keeps on producing “Homo Sacer”. As Agamben said, all of us are potential Homo Sacer. Korean leprosy tales can be a case which shows Homo Sacer had already existed from the age of the olden tales rather than it appeared accidently in modern times.