파토스의 윤리학과 문학의 (불)가능성 - 백신애 문학에서 ‘정념’의 문제 재고 -

Abstract

This article critically reviews the existing studies which denigrated the pathos of the literature of Baek Sin-Ae as the evidence of impossibility of literature lacking literary intellect, or interpret the literature of Baek Sin-Ae as a text which overcomes pathos and is oriented to ideas, or focuses on the pathos of the writing of Baek Sin-Ae but partially explains it or reads it passively, and give a second reading of the pathos in the literature of Baek Sin-Ae. In other words, the intent was to read the ‘pathos,’ which Baek Cheol had pointed out as a quality incoherent with literary intellect and with which he cast the novels of Baek Sin-Ae out of the (history of) literature, as the particularity of the literature of Baek Sin-Ae and the possibility of ‘minority literature’ running away from the majority mainstream literature, of ‘different’ literature which alienates the literature reigning as the universal. For this, the development of the discourse where the modern literature planners emphasize emotion as the quality of modern literature which separates itself from the literature of the premodern era yet make it converge on ‘morality/sympathy’ has been examined, and the point where the pathos found in the literature of Baek Sin-Ae is a relational identity which produces the encounter and reaction with others, unlike sympathy which separates civilization from savagery and estimates the level of psychological development, and where it becomes not a morality aimed at enlightenment/edification but an ethics oriented towards access/generation with others has been read. Ethical writing is the execution of transformation where the self is lost and one becomes an other, and the sentimental basis which enables such is ‘empathy.’ Baek Sin-Ae verifies that literature is not a hierarchical sympathy or ideological solidarity, but a site of empathy of engagement with others. This alien definition which goes against the majority literature caused the literature of Baek Sin-Ae to be excluded as non-literature, but rather, through this impossibility of literature or ‘being non-literature,’ Baek Sin-Ae produces the possibility of a different literature.