시 이미지 연구방법론(2)－문학 이미지는 무엇을 욕망하는가?

Abstract

In the previous article on the new methodology of studying poetic images, I suggested that literary images might be regarded as sorts of places where literature ‘develops from within.’ It’s because, as Georges Didi-Huberman said, the way how we imagine determines basic conditions of politics. Likewise, poetic images are both specific and general, both individual and social. Nonetheless, regarding this argument, some critics pointed out that a certain positivity(Positivität) must be given to ‘literary images.’ Actually, as W.J.T. Michell explained, it is necessary to examine the conditions of the making of texts and images in terms of “hybridity.” Theoretically saying, texts and images can not be strictly divided from their origins. On the contrary, texts or images originate from the state of hybridity. It means they are always at the state of mutual need and intervention. The same logic can be applied to the matter of the requirement of the ‘distinctive features’ of literary images. What matters more is the effectiveness of literary images, not the ‘positivity’ of the literary images. In that point, three facts about the literary images needs to be focused. First, literary images doesn’t merely represent the reality. Secondly, the effect of literary images’ can not be confined to the rhetorical or figurative usefulness. Thirdly, the literature images are not just same as the perceptual impressions. Rather, they are active thoughts themselves. Consequently, we need to ask what do literary images want rather than to ask what literary images are.