주체의 궁핍과 ‘손(手)’의 윤리- 정용준, 김영하, 김애란의 소설을 중심으로

Abstract

The debate over the 'death of the subject' which was popular in the end of the 20th century has been criticised since the 21st century. It is said that the debate over the 'new subject' rather than over the 'subject impossible' is a more productive and future-oriented one. The new subject from Korean novels in 2000s comes to be subject to ethics as it is in a state of 'destitution' which is incomplete, opaque and unbalanced. The reason why is that vulnerability of the subject comes to be destitute by violence of the 'neighbor'. In three short stories-Greetings by Jeong Yong-Jun, Searching For The Child by Kim Young-Ha, Where Would You Like To Go? by Kim Ae-Lan-representative aspects of such a destitute subject are novelized through 'hands' of the subject who lost a precious family member. In the novel by Jeong Yong-Jun, there appear 'hands of the solidarity' of mothers whose sons died a suspicious death while serving in the army. However they can never lament such a death so it shows the impossibility of lamentation. In the novel by Kim Young-Ha, the hero should discern 'faceless' of the 'bad neighbor' by giving no forgiveness to a woman who abducted his son. In the novel by Kim Ae-Lan, the heroine is exposed to the ambivalence of dispossession through the cure from resentment against her husband who died while trying to save his student to the concern about an elder sister of the dead student. In these novels, the ethics of the subject symbolized by a 'hand' shows a new attempt for criticising the ethical violence against the subject.