‘증인’의 조건과 ‘행동과 연대’의 가능성: 김붕구 ‘증인문학론’과 앙드레 말로의 관계를 중심으로

Abstract

‘The literature of the witness’ suggested by Kim BoongKu is a renaming of existentialist literature that focuses on Andre Malraux and Albert Camus. Kim argued that post-war Korean literature could be the literature of the witness which was regarded as World Literature at that time. An event such as war could not be explained by reason and logic. A witness is a person who experienced this tragic event. Nevertheless, the witness does not merely indulge in nihilism but testifies against violence and absurdity and acts based on humanism. Therefore, Kim thought that Korean writers who had experienced the Korean War were qualified to be witnesses and that they should be a witnesses. Kim regarded Malraux's novels such as Les Conquerants and La Condition humaine as the classic exercise of ‘the literature of the witness’ and picked the Chinese terrorist Tchen of La Condition humaine as a typical witness. Kim, however, absorbed Malraux's prejudice that westerners can act and Asians cannot. Even the act of the Chinese terrorist is based on such dichotomy and the order of rank between empire and colony. Moreover, the Chinese terrorist could not show any solidarity with other western comrades and the Chinese people. As stated above, although the Chinese terrorist experienced the tragic event, he did not satisfy the other conditions of a witness: act and solidarity. Kim picked the Chinese terrorist who is contradictory to the literature of the witness instead of picking communistic revolutionists who acted based on conviction and solidarity. He could not make a communistic revolutionist a model of witness because of the Korean War experience and anti-communism prevalent at that time. The war experience had given the post-war Korean literature a chance to become world literature such as existentialist literature, but at the same time, anti-communism and absolutizing the war experience had stifled the unconstrained and diverse envisioning for a blueprint of Korean literature.