시선의 권력과 식민지의 비가시성 - 「소설가 구보씨의 일일」과 「악마」에 나타난 질병의 의미

Abstract

This article examines the meaning of the diseases in “A Day of Novelist Gubo” and “The Demon” by Park, Tae-won, focusing on the relationship between the colonial knowledge and power, and reads Park, Tae-won’s novel in the 1930s as novels that showed ‘impossibility of observation’. The concept of ‘Gohyeonhak’ and ‘Walker’, which influenced the study of Park, Tae-won novel at this time, presupposes the existence of observers in the novel of Park, Tae-won. However, it is difficult to see that Gubo act properly as observer in “A Day of Novelist Gubo”. Gubo don’t have sensibilities necessary to for an observer, because he is a neurastheniac. However, it is necessary to note that the term ‘neurasthenia’ was used as a term to conceal the misery and seditiousness of colonial Korea. Determining what was visible and invisible in colonial Korea was colonial knowledge-power backed by a colonial surveillance system. Gubo was bound to see and speak under the control of these colonial knowledge-power, and ultimately gubo confesses that he was forced to stay in an incompetent observer as a neurastheniac by appropriating the term of colonial knowledge-power. “The Demon” describes a situation that anxiety about gonorrhea leads to fear of sight loss. It is interesting that gonorrhea exists because it is visible for colonial knowledge-power represented modern medicine, but it is understood to be present but not visible to colonial natives. This shows that the colony can never acquire the colonial knowledge-power perspective that produces visibility. In these two works, the coloniy is invisible to colonial natives in a dual sense. In this respect, the restoration of ‘possibility of observation’ after “Scenes from Cheonggye Stream” needs to be discussed in relation to Park’s discovery of autonomous ‘knowing’ that is not dependent on colonial knowledge-power.