길항, 그리고 유토피아 건설의 실험-김형경, <성에>를 중심으로

Abstract

The world is run by the principle of rival antagonism, such as man and woman, human and nature, heaven and hell, good and evil. This is why we call human destiny as paradoxical. For he is neither hot nor cold, neither an angel nor a demon, neither completely sacred nor completely profane. Nevertheless, man constantly tries to build the most beautiful fantasy island or everlasting utopia, where there is nothing but happiness. The irony here is that he knows very well that this sort of utopia is absolutely impossible to build, no matter what. That is, we know that utopia is “no place” and yet we desire it madly. In this novel, the author experiments two kinds of utopia building, i. e., eros utopia and thanatos utopia. But the utopia building based on eros fails, or is doomed to fail, because firstly man cannot help having some private possessions, such as my child, my woman, my money, my tree etc., and secondly this experiment, if successful, must lead to the thanatos utopia experiment. For man and woman at the final moment of orgasm do desire to die and pursue death rather than life. The utopia building based on thanatos also fails, or is doomed to fail, mainly because death cannot be the object of experiment. For all men die once, and death can never be repetitious. This means that the author and Mr. Bataille did not realize that all experiments must be, in principle, repetitious and testable. Should we throw away then utopia building altogether? The author emphatically says no. For all human efforts to build an utopia has some “healing function” to human existence..