This thesis seeks to reexamine proletarian literature in colonial Korea and position the proletarian literary movement as a model of ethical-aesthetic practice, paradoxically possible under the most impossible conditions by referencing the concept of ...
This thesis seeks to reexamine proletarian literature in colonial Korea and position the proletarian literary movement as a model of ethical-aesthetic practice, paradoxically possible under the most impossible conditions by referencing the concept of aesthetic representation as a critical reflection on the very act of representation.
The subject who represents, perceives, and understands "reality" through a different grammar is already a different subject. Through experiments with representation and a different literature that deviates from, and even subverts, the established grammar of representation, the aesthetic practice of proletarian literature not only participates in the proletarian movement, which seeks to form revolutionary subjects, but also constitutes its core. The political ideology of the proletarian revolution drove the development of proletarian literature's challenging and powerful representational grammar and narrative devices. In this process, proletarian writers represented a community that was connected to the proletariat through representation which did not culminate in proletarian exploitation. Until its Bolshevization and dissolution, the proletarian literary movement consistently developed through a process of becoming more clearly aware of the principles of aesthetic self-alienation, self-reflection.
The proletarian literary movement not only had to actively devise forms of representation that could serve as a wing of the proletarian revolutionary movement, but also, by transcending the realm of established representation it had to secure the identity of proletarian literature as a "different" representation, a "proletarian literature." Focusing on this, Chapter 2 of this paper illuminates the ways in which proletarian literature, sharpened by the "content-form debate," relativizes, destroys, and appropriates existing forms of representation. Subjects accustomed to living within the established world order and its structures find it difficult to imagine a world beyond the naturalized representation of reality without "external" motives and resources. Furthermore, the proletarian writers of colonial Korea, having embarked on becoming subjects of proletarian literature through Russian literature, knew from their own experience that other forms of representation and literature could exert a transformative power on the subject. Consequently, these writers-intellectuals took upon themselves the task of functioning as the "external" motives necessary for the proletariat, who posited reality and the world as closed structures, by engaging with them through representation.
To practice engagement with the suffering of the proletariat through representation, an approach had to be sought that would prevent writers and intellectuals from once again subjecting the proletariat to the violence of othering through representation. Through this, the relationship between proletarian literature, intellectuals, and the proletariat was conceived as a circuit: proletarian literature, a conduit through which the suffering of the proletariat passes through the sensibilities of writers, and returns to the proletariat.
Chapter 3 examines representative debates, such as the "content-form debate" and the "popularization debate," to examine how the question "How should we do literature differently?" was addressed in the sub-topics "How should we create differently?" and "How should we judge differently?" The question of how writers-intellectuals should differ in their approach to proletarian literature, and how proletarian literature should be evaluated, became the most fiercely debated issue within the community of proletarian writers. Just as a sense of commonality forms the basis of aesthetic judgment, class-based commonalities yield class-based aesthetic judgments. Since the revolution has not yet been completed, the proletariat, the subject of the revolution, has not yet been completed. Consequently, neither a complete proletarian literature nor a complete proletarian writer exists. This means that no existing subject possesses the "aesthetic sense" that serves as a complete criterion for judging the success of "proletarian literature." If a work submitted as "proletarian literature" resonates with the tastes of a certain existing subject and demonstrates the beautiful unity of that subject and the world, this proves that the work is not proletarian literature. Consequently, the "common sense" shared by the community as a certainty for contemporary proletarian writers was ultimately a form of antipathy toward and division with their established literary identity, with the conclusion that "conformity to our current sensibilities cannot be the criterion for judging proletarian literature" and "we are not truly proletarian writers today." If both proletarian writers and the proletarian masses could transform their established sensibilities into "proletarian" ones through literature, it was believed, the proletariat would be moved by revolutionary emotion, and proletarian writers would emerge as true practitioners of proletarian literature.
As the Communist Party's continued existence as a process of "reconstruction" reveals, in colonial Korea, the "party" was not a representative entity guaranteeing truth and goodness, but rather a nonexistent entity. Furthermore, proletarian writers consistently lagged behind the proletarian vanguard and the objective revolutionary situation, and were thus judged to be insubstantial and incompatible with the label of "proletarian writers." Around 1930, the slogan of this final "reorientation"—Becoming Bolshevik—pointed to the consistent line of the proletarian literary movement, which they were always meant to become. Building on this, Chapter 4 focuses on how the sacredness perceived in the figure of the "party" was linked to the sense and meaning of an liberation distinct from the context of institutionalized, established religion. The conditions of colonial Korea, where the party was "impossible" and not yet registered with the state apparatus, became the ontological conditions for proletarian literature and proletarian writers as subjects who could not yet adequately represent/represent the proletariat, or subjects who were not yet "Bolsheviks." This, through the impossibility and vulnerability of the intelligentsia's self-assurance, formed the paradoxical conditions of possibility for the aesthetics and ethics of proletarian literature.
Around 1923, Kim Ki-jin and Aso Hisashi predicted that "a revolution would occur in ten years," but by the mid-1930s, with the dissolution of KAPF, the proletarian revolution in Korea was perceived as at least delayed. Therefore, the narrative of the Korean revolution, which constituted the international communist movement, was not discarded but temporarily suspended. It needed to be registered and preserved as "a meaningful act of the subject achieved despite adverse objective conditions." "National literature" became a newly recognized registry for this purpose.