종생기:증상으로 읽는 이상 문학

Abstract

This paper presents Sang Lee’s work from a perspective of symptoms. This is arrived at by means of a detailed reading of “JongSaeng-Gi,” one of his stories known to be extremely elusive. As used by Freud, ‘symptoms’ do not simply indicate features of hysteria, but rather they are integrated features of human living. Symptom, a filling of the Void, can take on positive as well as negative aspects. Positive symptoms are sublimated objects, objet a as promoted by Lacan, while negative ones are perversions or psychoses. In Lee’s works, symptoms can be explained with a pun, “동해.” One meaning of "동해" is "infant" and the other is "skull." “Jong Saeng-Gi” is a love story of a pair who are in an effort to disguise and hide their minds before one another because of overflowing self-consciousness. In the story, the narrator, a lover, overcomes a girl who deceived him, through his writing after being his own death. It is a story written by a skull, a Lacanian subject whose other side is the Void, nothing. Thus, Lee’s writing presents a symptom, a filling of the Void, to be repeatedly read in different contexts. My ultimate assumption is that Lee’s writing style can be classified into two categories. That is, the style which keeps a normal space between words, represents properly controlled self-consciousness while the style which does not allow any spaces at all, represents the overflowing of self-consciousness.