조명희의 디아스포라적 삶과 문학적 변이 그리고 실체로서의 근대

Abstract

Twentieth‐century modernity is the age of ‘exile.’ Cho Myeong‐hee(1894~1938) is the writer who shows clearly the spot where the contradictions of colonial modernity collide with one another. His life and literature embody Korean modernity and, at the same time, suggest the possibility for reviewing modernity from the viewpoint of the Diaspora. While modern novels demonstrated colonial violence and class contradiction by configuring poverty and oppression, Cho Myeong‐hee, going further, illustrated the risk and fear of exile threatening survival and community itself. Confronting the tendency of modernity toward homogenization, Cho Myeong‐hee may be called a diasporic substance that overcomes and renews the self through temporal and spatial movement, mutation of ideology and thought, genre acculturation, etc. It is also a spot of change or acculturation originating from the inside of modernity. We may suppose another diaspora that constitutes modernity via Cho Myeong‐hee, the representation of modernity. It is not merely an experience of diaspora weaved or configured with imagination but should consider conditions accompanied by the positivity of the body. The contemporary life represented in his novels will be the prehistory of diasporic life shown to us who will life a ‘postmodern’ life, and a medium for exploring the potential of human beings.