5·18과 서사: 고통, 신체, 재현 -임철우 초기 소설을 중심으로-

Abstract

In this thesis, Lim, Cheol-woo's early novels were analyzed as 'Wounded Storyteller' and 'Body in Solidarity'. Lim, Cheol-woo recreates ‘5·18’ as a person in pain before 1987, when media coverage of ‘5·18’ was banned, and questions the ethics of literature. In previous studies, such narrative representations were judged to be overly lyrical and under-represented or evaluated as 'the unrepresentation' language. In this study, it was determined that a new perspective on the 'language of pain' was necessary. Wounded Storyteller is characterized by the performative ability to say continuously through metaphor, the 'something' of pain, but because the 'what' cannot be specified. Even though Wounded Storyteller continues to speak of suffering, it is not an appropriate ethical and literary evaluation to say that it cannot be a ‘testimony’ or to dismiss it as a language of ‘lyricism’. Lim, Cheol-woo's early novels suggest the fact that '5·18' is continuing through Wounded Storyteller. The characters in the novel either sense that there is a system for managing life through 'inclusive exclusion' within the country after '5·18', or they live their lives while being overwhelmed by that order. However, after ‘5·18’, as the characters who lived each meet, the latent anxiety and fear materializes. As a result, all the characters face each other's faces, who are afraid of the sound of a siren with a 'white face'. Whether it is a Wounded Storyteller or a person living independently of him, the fact that ‘5·18’ continues and ‘commons of pain’ is revealed. The 'face of pain' becomes collective. Through this, it shows that the ethics of literature can start right from ‘words of pain’.