기호 행동으로서의 문학과 문학의 유용성 논변

초록

This paper examines Choi In-hun's literary theory of the late 1970s from the perspective of what may be called the ‘argument for the utility of literature.’ The central text of analysis is “Literature and Ideology”(1978), supplemented by a reading of “What Does Literature Do,” written around the same period, and “Novel and Drama”(1979). This was a time when Choi had just returned to the Korean literary scene after completing his stay at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, and his decision to abandon novel writing in favor of playwriting had drawn considerable attention. Choi In-hun distinguishes human action into ‘real action’ and ‘sign action,’ further dividing the latter into ‘sign action for reality’ and ‘sign action as reality.’ Literature and art belong to the category of ‘sign action as reality’ and may appear doubly impractical in that they do not aim to directly alter or act upon actual reality. Choi argues, however, that literature creates a fictional reality distinct from actual reality—a ‘negative(minus) reality’ constituting the world of the literary work—and that this fictional world embodies a self-sufficient and complete totality. Through the experience of literature, readers are able to intuit the entirety of civilizational information, and it is precisely this capacity that constitutes literature's unique function and the basis of its utility. The nature of this argument becomes clearer when set against Kim Hyun's literary theory of the same period. Both thinkers take as their starting point the common perception that literature is not directly useful in practical life, yet their answers point in different directions. Whereas Kim Hyun locates the value of literature in its capacity to expose and scandalize the oppressive nature of all that is deemed useful, Choi In-hun finds literature's utility in its power to bring human beings face to face with the totality of civilizational information, thereby laying the groundwork for an autonomous life. The very title “What Does Literature Do” may itself be a conscious echo of the interrogative chapter headings of Kim Hyun's The Status of Korean Literature, suggesting how closely the two writers' discussions are intertwined. The latter half of the paper reveals that Choi's argument for the utility of literature leads paradoxically to a recognition of the limitations of the novel as a genre. For literature to fulfill its function of enabling an intuition of the whole of civilizational information, readers must be able to receive the fictional world as a ‘negative reality’ genuinely distinct from actual reality — a condition that, in Choi's judgment, is difficult to meet within the genre of the novel. The genre he chose instead, as the one least prone to confusion with actual reality, was drama. In this light, Choi's turn to playwriting was not a contingent event but a practical conclusion derived from his own literary theory.

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