상호텍스트성의 관점으로 차학경의 『딕테』 읽기

Abstract

This paper focuses on the intertextuality between written texts and image texts in DICTEE to show how Theresa Hak Kyung Cha resists against the unity or wholeness of narrative and history restoration and breaks down national, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic boundaries. The theoretical basis of my argument is largely based on Barthes's intertextual theory. Barthes's intertextuality is based on the idea that works of literature are built from systems, codes and traditions established by previous works of literature. In other words, every text has its meaning in relation to other texts. This relationality can involve the radical plurality of the sign, the relation between signs and texts and cultural text, the relation between a text and the literary system, or the transformative relation between one text and another text. Therefore, the term intertextuality promotes a new vision of meaning, and thus of authorship and reading. DICTEE speaks through intertextual mix of multiple, disembodied voices, that is, borrowed citations from Cha's mother, Hyung Soon Huo, to the letter writers, to historian F.A. MacKenzie, to film scripts, to pieces of uncaptioned photographs scattered through the text, which are related to history, specifically Korean national history and the contemporary legacy of that history in relations to the West. But this history is a collage history. Collage is a form where the works collected are marked as foreign, detached from their context. Cha tries to reconstruct history for colonized and marginalized subjects through these fragments of the text, which work against authoritarian discourses of wholeness and unity. In DICTEE the mix of familiar, testimonial, and public discourses such as news report, historical documents with photographs and diagrams challenges the expectations of what is political or historical. This collection of multiple voices in DICTEE acknowledges that history is personal and subjective and breaks a discourse of wholeness. For example, Cha presents some pieces of photographs like a graffiti inscribed in Han-gul, a picture of three crucified martyrs, and a photograph of a massive demonstration, which are out of place with the narrative being told in the text. The frontispiece which opens DICTEE without a clear context or narrative of connection shows doubly Korea's formidable history of repeated colonization and the difficult role of immigrant culture in Japan or the United States. Cha's frontispiece and her subsequent handling of pictures in DICTEE demonstrates how the strategy of covering over the image suggests the possibility for a more attentive viewing practice, one that shows both what is visible and what is not. Through the intertextuality between the written texts and image texts Cha exposes the difficulty of re-writing history for colonized and marginalized subjects and also opens up the space for the reader to question the interpretative moves of history.