흔들리는 종교적․문학적 유토피아 : 1970～1980년대 기독교 사회운동의 맥락에서 살펴 본 노동자 장편 수기 연구

Abstract

Encountering Christian Social Movement in the 1970s and 1980s, the writing of working class people dismantled the notion of religious and literary utopia as well as penetrated into the boundary of literature. Their autobiographical writing has a connotation of representing and pursuing the heterotopia, in which working class people struggle against the power of interrupting the progress of their liberation. Heterotopia―utopia existing in the real world―in the writing of working class people is the place of community where they keep their own liberation movement based on the strong sense of solidarity. The organizations of Industrial Mission and Christian Academy social education programs were deeply involved in the labor movement of the time and producing the discourse of christian social movement based on religious and theological discussions. In particular, the theological paradigm shift of dismantling the utopian notion of redemption illuminated the insight of the liberation for working class people through constructing the democratic society “here, now.” In Christian Academy social education programs, working class people were encouraged to have a dialogue, discuss, and write their own words; and it was a fundamental strategy of the labor and the social movement for building a true humanitarian and democratic society. Indeed, the writings of working class people, which was published in The Dialogue, were considered the linguistic and literary practice and performance of democracy. The Crying Out of the Stones written by Yoo, Dong-woo, which is the most renowned autobiography of working class people of the time indicates that the project of building a new society is based on the democratic relationship and community of workers, their own independent actions, and equality. Literary critics and intellectuals discovered in the writings of working class people the potentials and the possibility which they were not able to find in literature. As a result, the writings of working class people become included in literature. On the other hands, the writings of working class women cast light upon the notion of heterotipia; that is, the true liberation of working class people is not completed by a messiah-like figure, nor found in the utopia. Rather, it is the place that they find, situate, and realize ‘here, now’. Therefore, this heterotopian writings of working class women fight against the hegemonic and capitalist power of interrupting the utopia, making a new prospect of the experience, thinking, and imagination of the true liberation.