민족과 제국의 동거 - 최남선의 만몽문화론 읽기

Abstract

Choi Nam-sun took up a professor-ship on April, 1939 and resigned it on November, 1942. Before and after that period, he had written a series of paper on the origin of the founding of Manchuria and Man-Mon culture. Through these thesis he defended the historic justness of Manchuria and reproduced the logic of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere centering around Japanese imperialism. However, Choi Nam-sun in the process of it was always trying to put the Joseon(nation) on the origin and center. The core of Joseon, Tanguncentrism, was carried in ‘Bulham culture theory’(不咸文化論) completed through the interpretation of East-Asian myth centered on Tangun myth in the 1920s. In the extension line of this Bulham culture theory, as Man-Mong culture theory(滿蒙文化論) was composed in order to fulfill the mission of the culture construction of Manchuria, national discourse and imperial discourse seemed to become one but came into conflict with each other. Choi Nam-sun made himself an ambiguous text. Inside of his ambiguousness, he became a Japanophile and became a nationalist, too. This ambiguousness of Choi Nam-sun was comprised in the way itself called mythology, especially based on the knowledge of national pedigree, the comparative philology, folklore. The understanding of history through myth can not but aim for the universal history. When this universality changed into imperial discourse, Choi Nam-sun was confronted with a contradiction that justified the japanese imperialism by the name of a nation. This confusion is the essence of Manchuria discourse.