20세기 말 한의학 번역하기: 근대, 하이브리드, 동아시아성

Abstract

A noteworthy trend in recent research on the modernization of East Asian medicine diverges from earlier narratives that primarily emphasized its marginalization, alienation, or biomedicalization within the tides of modernization and scientization. Specifically, recent studies have highlighted the diverse styles of practice, hybrid transformations, emergences, and network expansions within East Asian medicine, along with the agency of East Asian historical actors, thereby challenging the Eurocentric and monolithic concept of “modernity.” Against this backdrop, the East Asian Medicine Translation Project—Medical Reasoning in Terms of Circulation and Structure (Hanŭihak Sunhwankuchoron)—which emerged in Korea during the late 1990s, offers significant insights into the modernization or flexible transformation of East Asian medicine. This project redefined anatomy and physiology as universal human knowledge and as a lingua franca for communication (i.e., a tool) to translate or reinterpret East Asian medicine through this universal framework, thereby strengthening the internal capacity of East Asian medicine community. While dispelling the prejudice that translating East Asian medicine in anatomical and physiological terms would disassemble it or subordinate it to biomedicine, the project initiators proposed an analytic framework (along with practical exemplars) of holistic humoral dynamics, rooted in and legitimized by the central themes and clinical achievements of East Asian medicine and articulated in material terms. Declaring themselves as the successors to East Asian medical tradition, the project initiators emphasized that medicine is not a body of knowledge already completed in ancient times but rather a progressive field that continuously expands and develops into the future. The medical body revealed in this project is not a body to be reduced to material elements but rather a holistic body, operating dependent on the local context, where fluids circulate in dynamic balance. Through this approach, the project directly challenged the dogmas of biomedicine and science rooted in mechanism, reductionism, and determinism while creatively maintaining “East Asian-ness” or East Asian Identity. Such an initiative represents a pioneering case of exploring the substantive possibility of consilience or cognitive fluidity between East Asian medicine and biomedicine, thus moving beyond mere mechanical coexistence or eclectic practice. In conclusion, the Translation Project in Korea at the end of the twentieth century constitutes a powerful epistemic critique of Eurocentric modernity and serves as an intriguing example of the diversity, elasticity, hybridity, vitality, and creativity found within the historical landscape of East Asian medicine.