근대 이행기 타자 이해와 소통 구조

Abstract

In the nineteenth and the twentieth century, marked by the dismantling oftraditional socio-cultural system, East Asia came under the modern world systemrepresented by the West. The rapid transition required East Asian nations tonewly understand their others, and this simultaneously caused a new selfconsciousnesson the part of East Asians themselves. To communicate withothers, one should understand others while being awake to one’s ownsubjectivity. However, understanding of others has its innate limitation sinceothers are always perceived as an image by the subject. From the perspective of mutual understanding, the image of others is reflectedin the subject’s interiority, linked to the subject’s desire. Generally, the reflectedimages are shaped by the subject’s self-representation, which often results inmaking grades between the self and the other, perceived as inferior, or vice-versa from the subject’s perspective. In this process, a subject can appropriateothers, or itself become their prize, illustrating the centrality of the subject-objectrelationship in this process. For example, the Choson claim of being the keeperof Sinocentrism could be interpreted as an example of an appropriation ofothers, whereas the fact that the intellectuals of the enlightenment periodregretted being Korean could be seen as an example of becoming the prize ofothers. In the East-Asian enlightenment period, westernization was regarded as ahistorical necessity and other possibilities were ignored. It was necessary for thesubject to experience anxiety when it tried to prove itself through others. It wasthis very anxiety, and the desire for self-extension, that made the linear historyuniversal. According to the nation-state system, the natural geographicperipheries became national borders, so that many marginal territories contrivedto be national, being supposed to have a pure and singular culture in common. Playing the role of the locomotive of nation-state, the capitalist market economyfixed the subordinate relationship between the empire and the colony. Ironically,the discourse of nationhood functioned, simultaneously, as the mediator foridentifying both empire and colony. Searching the right way to communicate should not be a rationalization of thepresent order but an imagination for better subject-object relationship. Mutualunderstanding is possible only when each subject understands the values of theother (or others), which cannot be reduced to an identical principle, and whenthe differences are regarded as normal and, thus, turn into creative dynamics. Only at that time can the subject and the object move along together andestablish a real coexistence.