1980년대 문학에서 여성운동과 민중운동의 접점 -고정희 시를 읽기 위한 시론(試論)-

Abstract

When exploring the relation between the popular movements and women’s movements in the 1980s, it is pivotal to consider the fact that the cause of women’s movements was considerably weakened and the movements delayed due to the cause of the popular movements. What is just as important is the problem that a gender hierarchy has been naturally formed as the “people,” which is an entity without substance, was reproduced. The fact that the area of moral good regarding the people was reproduced as something masculine and that femininity became the subject of denial should be emphasized in particular. Women in actual workplaces were denied of their labor or were severely exploited, and the concept of femininity was also deemed to be morally corrupt, resulting in the women to suffer a dual otherization. Attempts to reconsider the popular movement in the 1980s or the people’s literature theory in agender perspective reveal the limitations of the counter-movements which had absolute political and moral validity at the time. The voices of female intellectuals who took active parts in the literary coterie magazine An Other Culture in the 1980s and the cases of feminist literature which had various issues in common with the intellectuals need to be studied carefully. This study analyzes the achievements of the women’s movements of the 1980s and the literary works on women’s liberation by focusing on the literary works by Jung-hee Koh who was an active contributor to An Other Culture. This study looks into the implications of Koh requesting to have the nonexistence of female literary critics as a key issue of the literary scene and of her poetry foregoing aesthetic tension and written in a long form employing straightforward language in the perspective of women’s “movements.” To Koh, literature served as a platform to publicize female liberalization.