‘문학’에서 ‘글쓰기’로 -김윤식의 ‘글쓰기론 3부작’ 논의를 위한 예비적 고찰

Abstract

After retiring in 2001, Kim Yoon-shik(1936~2018) started work on his ‘Writings Trilogy’ with the goal of telling modern Korean literary history in a new way. The trilogy commenced with Japanese Writings of Korean Authors in the Late Colonial Period(2003), continued in Nationalist Writings of Korean Authors in the Liberation Period(2006), and concluded with Autobiographical Writings of the Korean Student Conscripts in the Late Colonial Period(2007). Each encompassing a plethora of concerns and controversial points, these works reveal a significant gap between Kim Yoon-shik’s theory of ‘writings’ and the theory of ‘literature’ premised on the concept of ‘modernity.’ To Kim Yoon-shik, this work on ‘(the theory of) writings’ was necessary as a means of escape from the trends of previous research which, swept up in the presupposition of literature as a study of nation, narrated Korean literary history within the frame of the ‘nation-state.’ The reason for Kim Yoon-shik’s interest in the late colonial period’s ‘bilingual writing space’ (1942-1945) and the later ‘liberation space’ (1945-1948) can also be found here. Even the concept of ‘space’ in these terms is used to refer to places unreachable by the state’s influence on subjectivity. In taking those writings whose omission constituted the weak link in previous literary histories as the basis of his research, Kim Yoon-shik seems to have been trying to update the concept of literary history itself. It must also be noted that these concerns had been gathering not merely since the beginning of the 21st century, but from around the time of the collapse of socialism. Kim Yoon-shik’s insistence, after witnessing the so-called ‘end of history,’ that modern literary history must be analyzed from the perspective not of the researcher but of the ‘expresser’ (pyohyeonja) is not unrelated to this context. In short, he undertook his own theory of ‘writing’ in order to properly orient literary history and ‘deconstruct’ the concept of ‘literature’ premised on the ‘nation-state.’ There is not yet an established path for critique of the accomplishments and failures of the ‘writings trilogy.’ As a preliminary step in digesting the significance of the ‘late style’ presented by a towering figure who devoted his life to the study of literary history, this article reads Kim Yoon-shik’s texts ‘against the grain’ in an attempt to discern the ‘direction’ of the theory of ‘writing.’