물질문화 시대의 문학노동과 문학노동자론

Abstract

Can a writer be a laborer or not? Can literary work be a commodity or not? In the pre modern age, being a writer was a noble existence and literary work was not seen as a commodity. As well, writers disagreed with being seen in the status of laborer, but agreed with the status of the nobility. That is, until the modern era. As time passed, and societies developed into dominant capitalistic systems, the stance of the writer has gradually evolved into merely the producer of artifacts. The traditional notion of the writer and their literary work has been changed in the capitalist era. It is inevitable that a writer must now sell his own work within the capitalistic apparatus, the market. A writer’s work, his writing, must now be found to have value, and then be exchanged for that value in the form of money. When a writer writes with his or her imagination, he/she does not have any idea of money but rather it is his/her real noble effort to make marvelous literary work. But just at the moment when the writer finishes his/her writing, the work automatically changes into a commodity. He/she might sell his/her scripts to the magazine or publishing company where they evaluate these precious scripts based on the possibility of making money in the marketplace. The writer’s original idea, his/her marvelous literary work, suddenly disappears in the shadows of the powerful capitalist system that seeks to find monetary value in everything. This leads the writer into a dilemma and a tragedy. The gravity of capitalism strikes at the traditional idea of a writer and interpolates the writer to be a commodity producer. Even though he is trying to reject this interpolation, he should not but obey this oppressive order. He automatically becomes a literature labourer and his work suddenly becomes a commodity. It is an existent condition of the material culture in the age of capitalism. For the writer, the labour of writing has both sides, a delightful devotion for literature, and a sorrowful hardship for the market. It is not unreasonable to now consider a writer as a labourer and his/her literary work as being a commodity. If we agree with this conclusion, we can go further. Who will be a literature capitalist? And is there any surplus value in the literary society? These are the next questions to be answered.