‘작가’가 ‘문학’이 될 때: 『문학동네』의 작가 발굴 제도와 자전소설을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper argues for the composition and arrangement of author-related projects in the Munhakdongne (Literary Community) in the 1990s. The paper aims to show that the founding ideology of the Munhakdongne and its main critical discourse, the signifiers of ‘Writer’ and ‘Literature’, were supported and linked through the activation of the new writer discovery system, and autobiographical fiction as a project. In particular, it aims to show how autobiographical fiction, institutionalised and actively signified by the Munhak󰠀dongne, has produced the effect of equating the ‘Writer’ with ‘Literature’. Established in the winter of 1994, the Munhakdongne has regularised its literary awards and competitions for new writers in 1997. The Munhakdongne, which implemented a new writer discovery system with a different title for each issue, organised the magazine on this basis, and was able to become a writer-centred literary network that responded to and reproduced each other based on the hierarchy of ‘aspiring writers－prospective writers－writers－ editors·judges’. In addition, by organising ‘Young Writer Special’ and ‘In Search of Literature’, Munhakdongne was able to form a structure of ‘senior writers －junior writers－new writers’ and seek connections between them, making writers of all generations a resource. Among these, the autobiographical fiction that was planned as part of the ‘Young Writer Special’, was one of the popular literary forms of the time. The autobiographical fiction of the 1990s is related to the workers’ memoirs of the 1980s in that it is a self-narrative, but it is a form that is distinct from the memoirs in that it demands for the approval of the institution of the writer as a qualification for writing. In this case, autobiographical fiction can be a literary form that lies at the ultimate level of authenticity. This is because it represents the ‘Writer’, who is considered to be an authentic being, through the authentic form of ‘Literature’. By institutionalising of the autobiographical fiction, the Munhakdongne concealed the fact that it is the writer who makes the particular experience literary, and created a perverted perception of literary experience as the essence and origin of the writer. As a result, the writer could be privileged as a being predestined by literature.