‘전향’의 윤리, ‘혁명’의 기억 : 해방 이후 박영희의 문학사 서술에 나타난 기억의 정치

Abstract

This paper attempted to analyze the history of literature narrated by Park Yeong-hee a convert and pro-Japanese collaborator and to discuss a tendency of the narration of the history of Korean modern literature. After the liberation, Park Yeong-hee reflected that he wrote the history of literature to overcome the feeling of alienation and loneliness arising from his past. However, the most important purpose of his narrating the history of literature was to historically justify their conversion and pro-Japanese past. From this perspective, this paper attempts to analyze Park Yeong-hee’s history of literature as “conversion narration.” Park Yeong-hee attempts to do ethical justification of his conversion act before the liberation through the conversion narration. He depoliticizes the conversion narration into survival narration by highlighting ontological fear brought about by the loneliness of the individual locked in a “cell.” Also, he justifies the choosing of conversion into “inevitability” by embodying a convert into an ethical human being. By adding materialistic criticism to this, logical necessity is added to the conversion act. The history of literature narrated after the liberation is Park Yeong-hee’s planned product to justify the conversion act by replacing the conversion narration of an individual with universal history. In the history of literature after the liberation, Park Yeong-hee narrates by replacing the history of proletarian literature movement with the history of national liberation movement. But he does not narrate the peak period of proletarian literature movement, and instead, he attempts to discuss the contribution of proletarian literature through the review of the anti-conventional school literature of its prior stage. This can be seen as the intention of attempting to dilute the politics of the age by highlighting the anti-conventional school literature as much as the proletarian literature. Also, he highlights why the proletarian literature movement was not able to develop further and became extinct and attempts to prove the reason through internal limitations of limited material rather than external pressure. He composed the history of movement through the narration of collapse rather than highlighting the justification of the proletarian literature. This intention is proved by his marking the end of proletarian literature age with a conversion novel. Also, the history of literature after the extinction of proletarian ends up with the theory of tradition and a historical novel centering on Munjang magazine, and in this perspective, pro-Japanese narration and nationalism narration are used interchangeably. In this way, Park Yeong-hee turned his proletarian literature activities into the struggle for national liberation through the narration of the history of literature, and at the same time attempted to justify his conversion act. Also, in the narration of the history of modern literature, the pro-Japanese age was deleted and this can be seen as the act conscious of social circumstances of the time where conversion could be justified but pro-Japanese act could not be forgiven Nevertheless, however, Park Yeong-hee’s history of literature is not stitched smoothly as conversion narration alone, and this crack results from his refusal to give up his image as a revolutionary. Although it is the narration of a revolutionary made on the inside of the narration of the anti-conventional school or nationalism, his highlighting the embodiment of revolutionary movement that is connected with the keywords as underground organization and comrade, and death shows that he did not give up the exclusive possession of revolutionary image that he had before he turned into a convert. The inner side of such a divided convert could not express a Korean revolutionary as an indomitable thinker and it is recognized in the romanticized form without the mediation of the substance of the object and ideological agony. Thus, Park Yeong-hee’s narration of the history of literature is a complex text in which various changing forms of history of thoughts, which happened on the inside of historical waves of conversion and pro-Japanese activities and the establishment of the country after the liberation, crack and are stitched.