법문학비평과 소수자의 내러티브 ―박민규, 윤성희, 김애란의 단편소설에 대한 법문학비평―

Abstract

Human right issues are basically related to notion of isolation, emotional wounds, trauma and recovery, which cannot be sensitively described in rational language of law, or the Father. Literary works help grasping unseen and unheard narratives in legal discourse. Primary role that literature may play is to disclose, for literary narrative has prevailing power in touching emotional code of the mass through reportage. Moreover, unearthing yet-to-be-discovered subject issues in human right is a unique contribution that law and literature could make on legal discourse of human right, thereby leading to recovering polyphonic justice. Such disclosing, discovering, and recovering of minority narratives may be performed through literary criticism on novels of contemporaneous writers: in this case, Korean novels released in the last decade. While Korean literature from the post-war period throughout the 80s show tendency of treating wounds in relation to historical trauma or collective identity, drawing a clear line between prevalent oppressor(whether it be colonialism, military dictatorship or capitalism) and minority subjects as a whole, novels released after the 90s touch more personal issues and sentiments. Particularly writings of the 2000s illustrate post-historical, transnational, and surrealistic subject issues taking place in micro-spatial background. This article tries to illustrate unique perspective and storytelling that Korean novelists of the 2000s make use of when dealing with marginalized voices, especially focusing at short novels by three young writers: Park Min-gyu, Yoon Sung-hee and Kim Aeran. One signiture short story for each of the three writers had been selected to perceive allegory of law and to perform literary criticism of law: i) “Is That So? I am a Giraffe” of Park Min-gyu with the allegory of ‘law as arithmetic,’ ii) “To Bury the Treasure Map at the point of U-Turn” of Yoon Sung-hee with the allegory of law as fake treasure map, and iii) “Run, Dad!” of Kim Aeran with the allegory of law as running father. The peculiarities which may be perceived in the three novels of these contemporaneous writers when dealing with narrative of minorities are the following: i) postmodern style of narration, for the novelty that they bring to human right discourse derives from uniqueness of writing style rather than originality of themes or materials: for instance, blocking reader’s empathetic concentration by abrupt bluster of bizarre jokes in such serious scenes(Park Min-gyu), delivering painful event in dry numb sentences(Yoon Sung-hee), or running away to the imaginary before wounds of the Real reach the Symbol(Kim Aeran). Readers do sense the hurts, but still puzzled at where they derive from. Hence readers eventually develop keen sense of hearing and gaze. ii) perspective towards ‘law as the Father,’ for fathers in their stories are either absent or incompetent. Absent and incompetent indeed, thereby too vulnerable to be the subject of oedipal murderous wish. As a consequence, sons and daughters of these fathers are always-already well aware that justice to arrive would delay forever. iii) thus, the protagonists chose to take flight to the imaginary rather than standing up with fists of rage or gathering under the flag of “people united will never be defeated.” It is neither class nor ideology that creates sense of solidarity here, but the wounds of the other which only the wounded may recognize.