제국 일본과 번역 (없는) 정치 ―루쉰·룽잉쭝·김사량, ‘阿Q’적 삶과 주권

Abstract

"Nowadays, national literature doesn't mean much: the age of world literature is beginning, and everybody should contribute to hasten this advent." This is Goethe talking to Eckerman in 1827. "Nowadays, ethnolinguistic literature means nothing: the age of the Great East is arising, and everybody should contribute to hasten this world advent." This was a messsage of Empire Japan's cultural technocracies sent to colonial Korea and Taiwan's writers from late 1930s to the end of the war. The Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, of course, refers to areas that were under the rule of imperial Japan. But Japanese as national language or cultural language was an intricate problem in Colonies (to the colonial subjects?). Colonial writers, such as Kim Saryang and Lóng Yīngzōng, were well aware of this message delivered from the Empire. But they were also considering(pondering over?) a possibility of creating world literature in colonies by tactically utilizing elements of national (minjok) literature within the Japanese national literature (kokuminbunngaku). Nevertheless,Japanese meant the ruler's language for these writers; and at the same time, it was a universal language for people in the Co-prosperity Sphere; a language, which possibly could give a rise to the formation of world literature. In this dilemma between responding to their ethnic consciousness and to the demand arose from the political upheaval, a Korean writer Kim Saryang and a Taiwanese writer Lóng Yīngzōng, and a couple of their Japanese friends in literary circles reminded themselves of the success achieved by Lu Xun through his exemplary work such as The Ture Story of AhQ. How could they deal with the conflict occurring from the schizophrenic situation where they had to use the civilized language as colonial subjects? How could they describe 'their' (i.e. writers) own people's particular social life and reality when the empire's homogeneous rules enforced them to use 'their' (i.e. imperial Japan) language (yoso-no-gotoba)? Could colonial literature be world literature? I investigate linguistic sovereignty embedded in Imperial Literature (teikokubundan), through examining the 'NationalLiterature Discourse' (kokuminbungakuron) produced in colonies. Central term will be untranslatabilty; a state of exception and potentiality created by the facilitation of phonic expressions. A Korean novel A man I met in jail (Yuch'ijang'esŏ mannan sanai, 1941.2) written by Kim Saryang was translated in Japanese as Count Q (Qhakushaku, 1942.4. There is no doubt that it was inspired by Lu Xun's work) by himself, and his Japanese letter to Lóng Yīngzōng throws light on issues of colonial sovereignty. Kim focuses on the meaning of untranslatabilty by depicting the moments of Korean subaltern's blood and scream. Kim's message was like this: "we can all potentially be AhQ, and all of us can be situated in the state of exception as the colonized and nations also." I will elucidate the issue of linguistic sovereignty arose in the late Empire Japan through bringing the untranslatabilty of scream, groaning and crying of colonial subalterns. In imperial monolingualism, these scream frequently appears with katakana and hurigana inscription for giving the Korean pronunciation or showing the diglottic situation. Kim Saryang's Japanese was "Japanese as politico-cultural language", thus Korean as bio-political scream. As far as sovereignty is determined by linguistic articulation, writings of the phonic expressions in the state of exception create another moment of sovereign decision. According to Benjamin thinking, at that the time of saved world, all writing will be written by 'pure language'. Translatability means the possibility of pure language for him. Kim was hanging onto untranslatabilty with the other's language, that is, Korean, of course, but it could be Taiwanese, as long as this earns time. Because of the prohibition of colonial language, the process of translation was over in the 1940s. When all the writings produced by colonial writer were a sort of translation, only the untranslatabilty could be a road to achieve pure language.