「토지」와 겁탈의 변검술

Abstract

Rape is one of the most salient motifs in Park, Kyungri’s roman-fleuve, 「Toji(The Land)」, which has rarely been analysed in depth, though. This paper tries to deal with every episodes of rape described in the 「Toji」 with focus on uncovering the partriarchal nature of rape, through which the long paths of establishment of women’s subjectivity can be traced and reconstructed to make important opportunities to overcome the patriarchal ideology and dominance. Rape is not stand-alone violence against women’s body. According to the radical feminism, sexual violence and offence,bisexual love, and prostitution are located at the same continuum based on power structure of the society. Rape is not an exceptional,impetuous offence which threatens normality and orderliness of the society. It is nothing but the normality and orderliness itself. It is just one of the ways for the dominant narrative system to run, on which patriarchal powers, social institutions, gender, and nation-state can be constituted and maintained. Even though the male characters in the roman would discern rape from love, they only show that these two are two sides of the same coin: at the cost of the female characters’sacrifices, they can achieve their own success and, sometimes, they can get significant opportunities for their solidarity with each other. This paper applies the narrative strategy against rape script set by S. Marcus and Gibson-Graham to interpretation of the reaction patterns of the female characters who accept the rapes and tries to overcome their victimized situation. The female characters refuse to remain as victims of the rapes. They disobey the solemn imperatives of sexual impurity based on the patriarchal ideology,and challenge the gender control mechanism. Some of them try to negotiate with patriarchal system, some try to negate it, and some to overcome; most of them follow the way to subjectivity. They are so positive as to inscribe their desires into the raped bodies, and to re-constitute the situation and context from their own understandings, with which they can make some cracks and holes to the male dominant system, where the males can subjectify themselves by victimizing the females.