자본과 언어, 유길준의 『노동야학독본』의 노동 개념과 문체의 테크놀로지 — 통치, 계몽, 지휘의 결합 관계를 중심으로 —

Abstract

The study of systems of écriture of modern Korea has been discussedmostly focusing on the referential relation of ‘nation state＝nationallanguage’. This paper demonstrates that the invention of technology ofwriting that mediates capital and labor is another essential motive oflinguistic project in modern era, by concentrating on Reader for NightSchool Workers (1908) written by Yu Gil-Jun, who was a representativepolitician, a man of enlightenment, and also a businessman in early modernKorea. Even if modern écriture or the writing of the time is deeply involved in the nation state project, in the language transition, it is more crucial to indicate the problem how to govern the relationship between capital andlabor. Yu’s Reader for Night School Workers carries the concerns of the proper words of production and socio-ethical conducts. Yu’s consideration of social communication that mediates capital and labor is presented as the concept of labor ethics along with his various writing experiments. In order to understand why Yu conducts experiments of advanced level of persuasive speech methods, including attached type (rubi in Japanese),songs, and speech, we should consider not only the technology of ‘governmentality’, which the metonymy of ‘the nation-national languagenation(people)’ develops in the political realm, but also the structure of‘directing’, which the triangle of ‘capital-language-labor’ creates in thesocio-economic sphere. In this sense, Yu’s Reader for Night School Workers is a symbolicexample that shows the inextricable relationship among politicians’governing, intellectuals’ enlightening, and capitalists’ directing in modernKorea. Yu considers money and language the two mediums that governsocial communication, and he believes that the smooth circulation of themediums leads the accumulations of capital and knowledge respectively. Inthe social project that aims to combine loyal workers and enlightenedsubjects, writing of national language is more than ‘logos of polis’, or ‘therepresentation of the nation’. It is the social system of communication or thetechnology that mediates capital and labor.