너무 ‘적은’ 정치와 너무 ‘많은’ 윤리: J. M. 쿳시의 『치욕』

Abstract

Jung-A HwangJ. M. Coetzee's Disgrace has provoked strong emotional reactions and also intense critical debates. One of the reasons is obviously that it does not shrink from presenting a very uncomfortable portrayal of the persistent violence in post-Apartheid South Africa. What makes its reading an even more disturbing experience is that its main characters face extremely 'disgraceful' challenges in such a way that both politically and ethically engages the reader as well. That is also why there have been so many different and even contrasting critical judgements about the novel. This paper investigates the clear parallel constructed in the center of the novel between David Luries' violation of his student Melanie and the more overtly violent gang rape of Lurie's daughter Lucy. In so doing, it attempts to show that, despite their apparently different reponses to and different positions in the acts of violence, both Lurie and Lucy actually choose the same predominantly 'ethical' perspective, as opposed to 'political' one. Their ethics, however, fails to convey any significant positive contents, not because it is an openness to the absolute other or impossible alterity which cannot conveniently be translated into the state of affairs in reality, but because it is the result of their persistent rejection to admit anything other than the strictly 'personal' dimension. Thus, the novel explores another, yet unfamiliar, human limitation by bearing witness to a deadlock of too 'much' ethics coupled with too 'little' politics.