서발턴의 타자성, 새로운 윤리적 감각 - 황정은의 소설을 중심으로

Abstract

Discussions on the subaltern have been made in various ways around the texts that feature characters from lower classes such as the general people, the urban poor and workers. Spivak said that the important point in subaltern studies is to reveal the difference from the concept of the subject that pursued totality and homogeneity. This difference can be summarized as a non-visualizable spirit of resistance and its practice, something that the dominant discourse cannot fully appropriate and the otherness (negativity) that resists the capture of the dominant discourse. This study intended to explore the identity of the subaltern in light of their way of existing by determining who speaks of the subaltern, what is spoken of and how it is spoken of, while focusing on Spivak's view and using the term subaltern to refer to a subordinate position in a broad category. More specifically, the study looked into the aspects of how the subaltern is represented in novels of Hwang Jeong-eun who has consistently raised questions about the lives and ways of existing of the urban subaltern. Hwang's novels depict a life in a violent city (under development) and human beings living in the structure. However, they present good-natured characters and warm human relationships, which is why they are read as stories of comfort and hope. This study poses questions about who presents such positive prospects, speaks of love between the characters that symbolize hope, and in whose voice the praise and appreciation are given to such stories. In terms of the representation of the subaltern, it gradually evolves after "The Shadow of a Hundred" and reaches the peak in "Raptorial Birds in Upstream," as the point of otherness or difference that cannot be appropriated by the dominant discourse is represented in a concrete way. It is a unique representation method that puts the invisible and the visible into conflict, which serves as a way of cracking the subalternate intrinsic properties that have been justified. In other words, the author represents thoughtlessness and worldliness and a certain degree of shallowness, while blocking the imagination that can lead to compassion. And the narrator shows the will to resist as a subaltern by enunciating the rejection of the survival strategy that justifies the vulgarity, disliking and not being mixed, which shows the possibility of the relocation of his or her place.