일제하 농민문학론의 담론 구조

Abstract

In this paper, I attempt to examine the discursive structure lying under theories about peasant literature mainly developed by Chosun Nongminsa [The Society of Korean Peasantry] and KAPF [Korean Proletarian Artists Federation] in colonial Korea. Under Japanese colonial rule, Korean peasant literature theorists established their theories acknowledging that the peasantry occupied the majority of Korean people and was the symbol of conflicts in modern Korea. For the theorists, peasant literature seemed to iron out those difficulties and show the way to draft the future society in which peasants were emancipated; Under the guidances of theories about peasant literature, that kind of literature could be established properly. The theories, therefore, were unfolded under the dogma that literature should reflect the reality, show the blue print of revolutionary transitions of society, and be the basic instrument of social movement. In this sense, the theories consisted of three parts: the subject, theme, and expression of peasant literature. Those problems could be solved if peasants themselves become the subject of their literature. But in the case that peasants do not have systematic conceptions about their social status, it gets complicated. The theorists, consequently, imposed proletarian views or the spirit of the earth on the upcoming works of peasant literature. In addition, they performed the search for how to gather more peasant reader, because the works including those views or spirits would be useless if peasants did not read them. To sum up these points, we can conclude that peasant literature consists of works written by authors charged with aspirations for the emancipation of the peasantry, filled with details from actual lives from peasant lives, constructed according to the very languages of peasants, and easily read by peasants. This definition could be criticized in various senses: First, peasants can like to read the ones that do not have anything to do with their lives. Furthermore, Korean peasants in colonial period were mainly illiterate. I think it is possible to ascribe these problems to the intention to consider literature as an effective tool of social movement. This intention seems quite controversial because it has appeared as the basic pathos of the articles trying to examine those theorists. At this point, it is reasonable to examine the peasant literature theories in colonial Korea in precisely theoretical senses. One who attempts to examine the theories about peasant literature should not overlook those were created as the part of social movement. If so, she can evaluate them fairly and reasonably when she examine how effective the theories were as one part of social movement. In other words, she cannot judge them not with the analysis of the critical texts but with evaluation of their actual achievements in their practical impacts on their readers' mind and on revolutionary transitions of the society at that time. The studies on the theorists, however, have only focused on the internal logic of the theorists by now. This paper attempts to apply the exterior view on those theories and its conclusion provide the chance to rethink what studies on discourses about criticism must contain.