노동(자)의 재현과 고통의 재소유- 조세희의『침묵의 뿌리』에 담긴 ‘사북사건’을 중심으로

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the significance of JoSe-hui's “Root of the Silence” within the genealogy of 1980s proletarian(labor) literature/art and labor discourse. The work, penned by anintellectual writer, is based on a photograph. Its complex text,interspersing fiction with non-fiction, was pushed back from theforeground of the impending “movement” by 1980s proletarian literature(theory) emphasizing problems of identity of the “subject of creation” ascharacterized by “laborer's writings” (nodongja geulsseugi) and class partisanshipemerging in the late 1970s. In so far as “Root of the Silence” testified to the facts of the “Sabuk Indicent” (an incident which ruptured the state's political authority) in a period of harshmedia control, it stands as the most radical work of the 1980s. Jo Se-huiproblematized the inhumane, ecologically hazardous aspects of capitalistlabor from the perspective of the lowest rung on the labor hierarchyladder: the coal miners. In representing the lives of the miners engulfed inpoor working conditions, intensive labor, and destitution, Jo hoped theirpain would be “re-claimed” by the public (masses). In testifying to the “pain of the sufferers”, Jo hoped a sense of guilt would be instilled in the public. But when he represented the workers' poverty-rooted anguish, what resulted instead was a fundamental aversion to that labor. When he depicted the laborers' lives saddled with miserable working conditions and poverty, they were not reclaimed but insteadshunned and ruled out. The emphasis placed on “proletarian awakening” and “class solidarity” as proletarian literature's so-called proper mainstream was not without relation to this “dilemma of representation”. As a result, the intended goal of “Root of the Silence”, namely, the “reclaiming of pain”, was turned on its ear, leaving the fundamental question, “Who will claim the pain of the miners if it has been rejected by the nation-state, by the people, and by ideology?”