2000년대 여성소설 비평의 신성화와 세속화 연구 —배수아와 정이현을 중심으로

Abstract

This study aims to reconsider criticisms of feminine novels in the 2000s when the term ‘feminine literature’ began to disappear in the field of Korean literary history. It specifically delves into the characteristics of the novels written in the 2000s and tries to seek novelty since approximately 2005. During this time, analyses for novels emphasized the themes of escaping from reality and inner side to be discriminated from novels in the 1990s and began to access those of otherness and ethics in the late 2000s. In this paradigm, good femininity is regarded as ethicality and in fact it was removing the spaces for women as distinction. To see how the space for feminine literature being erased by facing with the newest feminism paradigm, this study meta-reviewed the criticisms for <에세이스트 책상> of Bae, Su-ah and first 10 novel collection <낭만적 사랑과 사회> and full-length novel <달콤한 나의 도시> of Jeong,Yi-hyun which were published in the middle- and late 2000s. The reason for why these two writers’ criticisms selected as samples is that criticisms about Bae, Su-ah and Jeong, Yi-hyun in feminine novels were representing the most different reading method. The criticisms about Bae, Su-ah emphasized each of artistic and spiritual aspect about main character’s homosexual relationship in the past and told ‘universal’ point without sexual distinction. On the contrast, the criticisms about Jeong, Yi-hyun emphasized performing ‘special’ feminine strategies of main character between adaptation and resistance in Capitalism. However, if the paradigms were analyzed relating to these two writers, which might seem to be divided into sacralization and secularization, they commonly premise post-modern feminism’s dismantling strategy. The criticisms in the 2000s which surrounding Bae, Su-ah and Jeong, Yi-hyun, represented how post capitalism society method, which producing more sophisticated and delicate otherness than those of past, integrated the principles of ‘distinction’ and ‘equivalence’ in dialectical motivation. For Bae, Su-ah’s homosexual relationship, its ‘difference’ was sacralized and all the social rules and relationships were deleted with achieving purity and absoluteness. Jeong, Yi-hyun’s consuming subject’s ‘distinction’ was secularized and made progressive and new feminine subject. Indeed, this seemed to hide the existence of women’s realistic desire. In this study, which figures out feminine novel criticism’s performance method and its limitation in the 2000s, it tries to become a small reference point in the feminism movement in society with entering late 2010s for how to criticize feminine novels again.