동아시아 ‘바리데기’ 이야기의 구조와 공간적 의미에 관한 연구

Abstract

The story of Baridegi has been told in many theatrical genres including shamanistic narrative and myth. Told throughout East Asia, the story of Baridegi in various renditions reflects religious traditions and philosophy of Asian Shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. In Korea, Baridegi has been orally passed down by the people and is largely philosophical with an aesthetical narrative structure. The main character, Bari, does not represent a specific historical figure but any and all abandoned person. Thus the interpretation of Bari’s character should be reflexive and consider her as one of us, the abandoned, rather than as the daughter of King Ogu. This interpretation renders the story of Baridegi universal. Baridegi resembles the narrative structure of a melodrama. The aesthetic style of a melodrama portrays a predictable and conventional life. For example, a sensational event that demands intense emotional involvement resolves in a happy ending. There is a clear dichotomy between the good and the evil, and a character who sacrifices him/herself for the good of society is always present. Baridegi embodies all these elements, which fuel its repeated reproduction. Baridegi also features a story about life-saving water. To obtain this water, Bari must experience ‘Unterweltthe’ world of the dead. What might such Ju Seung signify? As Baridegi is a story about the abandoned, the ‘Unterweltthe’ points to a unique spatial experience of her search for the water. And because there are many kinds of Bari in the world, the interpretation of the ‘Unterweltthe’ is open to the interpreter, allowing multiple considerations. In Baridegi the Ju Seung is a transitional and a transformational space. It is located outside reality and occupied by those excluded from the orderly and cultural society. Like graveyard and cemetery, it is where the dead inhabits and where the rejected without mercy resides. This Unterweltthe that Bari visits for the water is emblematic of Foucault’s heterotopia. In the Unterweltthe, Bari deconstructs death and transcends into the space of life. Here Bari begins the sacred path toward salvation. The moment Bari forgets the fear of death, her physical body experiences a sacred transmission form one state of property to another state of property. The Unterweltthe is the world of the dead, but for Bari it is space of the living, a reality. In such reality, Bari is neither woman nor man; noble nor plebian; dead nor alive. To Bari, the Unterweltthe is not an abstract utopia, but a heterotopia experienced as reality. According to Foucault, an individual in heterotopia does not belong to any nation, people, society or rationale. It is for this reason that creative ideas for revolution against a given society become possible. And in this transitional space, Bari is reborn as an autonomous being with her own principles. This article concludes with the following significant attributes. First, it broadens the interpretational landscape of Baridegi by approaching it as a narrative form of the abandoned. Second, it analyzes the meaning of Bari’s autonomy in relation to the spatial experience of the Unterweltthe, which exists outside nation-building ideology. Third, it opens up a space for questioning and evaluating the familiar narrative structure of the abandoned that is repeatedly reproduced.