황석영 ≪낯익은 세상≫의 장소 표상과 문화지리학적 함의

Abstract

Author Hwang Sokyong, in his work Familiar World(2011), critically examines the material desire of modern people by focusing on the landfill site ‘Ggotseom’ as a familiar place encountered by Korean society as it enters into a capitalist one. Through the gaze of the narrator, the author points out the cold stratification of industrialization by paying attention to the dissolution of a sense of community and the hierarchy of place represented by Ggotseom. The structure of physical power affecting even the children and the stipulation of compartmented place cross-sectionally depicts the old base of life in this unrealistic space to powerfully demonstrate the negative aspect of materialism. Just like the landfill site, urbanites in town and the department stores try to exclude the residents living in the landfill site from the place of the urbanites. The reader is able to see the phenomena of capitalist life deeply embedded within Korean society in the scenery of place ceaselessly separated through the ownership of capital and the sense of smell. Ggotseom children lack a sense of place in the home and family and perceive Ggotseom as an abandoned place filled with garbage – the ugly image of things. The culture of consumption has damaged their base of life, and in order to critically deliberate the dissolution of the family and the inhuman image of life, the author draws out the world lived by illusions(ghosts) represented as the blue light. With regards to the importance of community values and the solidarity of mutual care of the traditional world as a cultural value, the author compartmentalizes through a dichotomous arrangement between reality and unreality, dump/department store and general store/shrine, and past and present. The author creates a dichotomous narrative out of the cultural geography by arranging the landfill as a non-place and a topophobic place, and on the other hand, the general store and the community solidarity of the unrealistic space of the old shrine and spirits as topophilic places. After everything burns down, the lives of the people living in Ggotseom are the same, but the author speaks again about hope amidst a situation of despair. Through the young narrator, the author emphasizes ecological motivations and he dreams of a cultural topography of primitive space as an alternative. The return to ecological values is distant from reality just as much as the lives of the old spirits and may seem like a meaningless alternative. However, it emphasizes the regenerative power of nature just like budding sprouts, and the author presents the necessity of restoring circulatory ecological values and adaption as what we must learn in a life of agricultural community. Waste created from the unlimited supply of resources necessary to humans ultimately makes people inhumane, homes devoid of a sense of place, and children unlike children. Recreating primitive space into an unattainable and unrealistic utopia as an ecological alternative ultimately contains a dichotomous meaning. It is a space people cannot encounter in the current world, but these place were sufficiently enjoyed and indifferently overlooked in the traditional society of the past. The space of the landfill is a representation of place created directly by ourselves, where social contradictions involving the weakening of human solidarity and the dissolution of family as a result of prevalent materialism are all gathered together simultaneous with the transition to a capitalist society. Hence, people will only be able to recover a sense of place containing reality and an affection for place from the most basic place of home where the circulatory world of nature must be recovered and harmonized.