반(反)폭력의 방법으로서의 기억과 목소리 -사키야마 다미(崎山多美)의 『해변에서 지라바를 춤추면』을 중심으로-

Abstract

This article analyzes Okinawan author Tami Sakiyama’s novel Unjyuga, Nasaki with the purpose of examining war narratives written in ‘memories’ and ‘voices’. In short, the study attempted to examine how ‘memories’ and ‘voices’ recorded the Battle of Okinawa, which appeared in lieu of existing styles of war narratives recorded in the form of experience and testimony. As a work that questions the political nature of ‘records’ or ‘reproductions’, Unjyuga, Nasaki contains a narrative methodology or experiment that inherits the memories of the Battle of Okinawa. Most noticeable is the part that presents the literary methodology of imprinting the tragedy of war on the body of the individual by enabling readers to imagine the voices, smell, and movement of the dead, who had not been recorded hitherto, rather than by giving poof of the horror and violence of war as a consequence of securing new testimony from the dead at the Battle of Okinawa. The act of unconditionally taking dictation in the form of speech from persons involved in the war simply served to reinforce existing narrative rules and norms, and above all, the moment the voices of those involved were verbalized, the surroundings or gaps of the narrative were again left behind. Thus, this work salvages the incomprehensible and indescribable screams, cries, and mumblings of those killed as something with an unclear meaning and leads readers to imagine the source of those various sounds. Thus, the style of reasoning through ‘memories’ and ‘voices’, put in motion to substitute recording, has resurrected and restored the voices of the others who were excluded from existing history. Considering the fact that a historical narration based on reality and actuality unavoidably reveals the exhaustion of subject matter and the impossibility of narration, Tami Sakiyama’s narrative strategy offers great implications in that it arouses and imprints even the very existence of those outside the historical narrative through literary language.