복수(復讐)의 진부함 : <버닝>과 원한의 논리

강우성(Kang, Woosung) 삼육대학교 신학연구소 2021 신학과 학문 Vol.31 No.-

이 논문은 처벌과 용서 사이에서 ‘복수’의 길을 선택한 윤리의 문제를 최근에 나온 이창동 감독의 영화 <버닝>(2018)을 통해 살펴본다. 생각 없음에 기반을 두고 도덕원칙에 무지한 악의 평범성이 아니라, 공정을 내세워 정의의 문제를 치환하는 ‘복수의 평범성’을 통해 한국 사회의 병폐와 원한의 논리에 대해 사유해 본다. <버닝>은 소외된 한국의 젊은 남성이 자신의 실패한 욕망과 남성성의 위기를 사회적 계급적 대의 형태를 통해 해소하려는 일종의 환상의 드라마이다. 사회적 경쟁과 여성에 대한 욕망 모두에서 상위계급의 남성에게 패배한 하층의 남성이 환상을 통해 이들을 심판하고 용서하는 복수의 드라마를 그려내는 원한의 논리가 분석의 대상이다. 종수의 원한극을 종교적 용서나 윤리적 정의로 비판하기보다 공정의 이름아래 민낯을 드러낸 우리 사회의 병리적 독선의 하나로 형상화한다는 점에서 <버닝>은 정치적 영화이다. <버닝>은 비동시적인 것이 동시적으로 혼재하는 한국 사회의 뒤틀린 탈근 대성을 가감 없이 드러내는 일종의 일그러진 자화상이다. <버닝>의 정치학은 분노에 찬 사회적 저항의 주체들이 공정을 내세워 복수의 놀이를 펼칠 때 여성을 비롯한 타자들을 혐오하는 독선적 도착의 논리가 내재되어 있음을 고발한다. This essay attempts to explain why the cruel act of evilness often depends upon the logic of Nietzschean ressentiment that concerns less of an Arendtian guilt of thoughtlessness than the banality of vengeance in Lee Chang-Dong’s latest film Burning (2018). This film describes the marginalized young male, born after the 1997 financial crisis, who demands not equality or justice in social affairs, but the fairness of the rule in the game of social survival. The demand for fairness is a symptom of sheer frustration in the unconscious mindset of the South Korean youth since it displaces the battle against the system with antagonism towards social minorities, especially against women: the self-claimed victim identity is most explicit in their misogyny. Burning effectively takes issue with the distorted structure of feeling of misogynist repulsion in the South Korean youth, which is often disguised as the vengeful class antagonism against the “gold spoon.” Burning is especially unique in the way it delineates Jongsu’s seemingly social drama of class vengeance against the wealthy as an outcome of his perverse fantasy of unconscious masculine desire. With this fantasy of mature masculinity, Burning focuses on the way Jongsu, through his imagination, creates and demolishes the fake object of his own revenge while being ignorant of Haemi’s desire. In this sense, Jongsu’s murder of Ben can be seen as the self-righteous act of judgment and forgiveness. Burning is a drama of ressentiment, less tragic than banal. This film is political in that it shockingly problematizes the sheer banality, not evilness, of this “classless class struggle” of the South Korean youth, which camouflages the perverse logic of youthful ressentiment and displaces social struggle with the one for masculine rivalry or misogynist sexuality.

문학이론 교육의 한국적 수업모형 연구

강우성(Woosung Kang) 한국비평이론학회 2013 비평과이론 Vol.18 No.1

This essay attempts to suggest viable teaching models of literary theory education in Korea by exploring the theoretical as well as practical implications of "Theory Studies" in Korea for the past 15 years. Investigating the peculiar trend of theoretical interests in two prominent critical theory journals, Contemporary Criticism and Theory and Criticism and Theory, we discovered that Korean scholars of theory have preferred Lacanian psychoanalysis and Post-colonialism over the other theoretical positions. Unlike Anglophone academic journals whose 30-year index demonstrated the tendency of slow decline in theoretical studies, Korean journals show continued research interest in the so-called "Theory Criticism." In Korea, the 1990s witnessed a sort of upsurge of theoretical engagement and investment in contemporary "French" theories after the collapse of the stronghold of Marxist theory. The status of theory in Korea appears to have been stable and steady: pure theoretical researches and "theory criticisms" are getting popular, though classroom situation remains deplorable. In order to overcome the predilection for certain theories and enhance the theoretical literacy in literary education, it is urgently required to set up some basic principles of theory education. Combining the diachronic analysis with synchronic confrontation as the standard way of doing theories, this essay suggests two teaching models of theory education in Korea. One is for "history of theory"; the other for "theoretical overdeterrnination." While identifying relevant theoretical moments in literary and aesthetic texts, teachers help students confront "reflective moments" of vanous theoretical texts in their critical reflection. The success of theory education in Korea will depend upon developing such a theory-conscious reflection in the classroom through the practice of theory criticism.

문학 이후: 데리다의 해체론과 미국 문학이론

강우성(Woosung Kang) 한국비평이론학회 2006 비평과이론 Vol.11 No.1

  This paper tries to think about the cultural implication of Derridean deconstruction in the American intellectual milieu, especially taking issue of the concept of “literature” in the context of American-bred deconstructive criticism represented by Paul de Man. Delving into the complex process of theoretical transplantation, I analyse how philosophical claims of Derridean deconstruction came to be popular among literary critics in the United States, rather than in the field of philosophical debates. In America there has been a strong philosophical tradition of positivism, pragmatism, and the philosophy of language, and against these native traditions Paul de Man bravely articulates and develops the theoretical necessity of deconstructive criticism. In so doing, however, de Man also extends, even distorts, the spirit of Derridean deconstruction by unnecessarily ontologizing some key concepts and tenets of deconstruction as theoretical weapons for repeatedly performing self-reflexive acts of literary deconstruction. As it turns out, de Man"s literary deconstruction tends to presuppose an unremovable rhetorical contradiction or instability within the text and tries to show that every text is in its own way, always already, a self-deconstructive empty space. In contrast, Stanley Cavell"s theory of reading is much closer to Derridean deconstructive move in that it does not presuppose any kind of a priori structural nihilism, positive or negative. Overall, the lesson of the transplantation of Derrida"s deconstruction might be that a creative theory of reading is still needed in the work of deconstruction despite critical reflections on the literary iconoclasm of deconstructive criticism in America.

군도의 정치학: 하와이 주권론과 정착민 서사

강우성 ( Woosung Kang ) 미국소설학회 2024 미국소설 Vol.31 No.1

This paper attempts to elucidate the historical trajectory of native sovereignty movements in Hawai’ian archipelago and their socio-political struggle with Asian settler colonialism. Proponents of Hawai’ian native sovereignty have continuously demanded the “nation-to-nation” negotiation and the recognition of the U. S. federal government, while Asian settlers as “locals” in Hawai’i, now dominating the ethnic power structures of the State of Hawai’i since 1959, strenuously insist on the priority of multiculturalism in the society of immigrants. Politically allied with Democratic Party, Asian settlers are not willing to recognize the rights of indigenous people and their self-determination, let alone forming a coalition with natives. Sovereignty activists argue that this “liberal multi-cultural settler ideology” effectively supports what they call the structure of “settler colonialism” which relies on the unjustifiable identification of natives and settlers. Aptly described in Gary Pak’s novels, Asian settler colonialism in Hawai’i is a structural obstacle that hinders settlers’ coalition with natives by compelling them to forget the history of racial victimization of natives in Hawai’ian archipelago. After briefly revisiting the controversial issues of native sovereignty and settler colonialism in Hawai’i, I argue that archipelagic politics of coalition could really be dependent upon the settler’s recognition, not concession, of the legitimacy of indigenous sovereignty as a realistic strategy for mutual benefit. To be an American should not be the unilateral goal of all ethnic groups in the territories of the States.

정밀측위장비를 활용한 멀티콥터 통합항법센서의 항법시스템오차 모델링 분석 및 비교

강우성(Woosung Kang),오정환(Jeonghwan Oh),이동진(Dongjin Lee),김도윤(Doyoon Kim) 한국항공우주학회 2020 한국항공우주학회 학술발표회 논문집 Vol.2020 No.7

인공지능시대의 인간중심주의와 타자화

강우성 ( Kang Woosung ) 한국비교문학회 2017 比較文學 Vol.0 No.72

인공지능의 시대에 범람하는 담론들은 인류의 미래에 대해 양가적이다. 인공지능 담론은 인간과 기계의 관계를 성찰하고 인공지능 기계의 발전이 인간에게 던지는 도전들에 답하는 시도들이다. 인공지능 담론은 근본적으로 과학기술의 가능성에 대한 양면적 전망을 핵심으로 하지만 심층에 놓인 근본적 질문은 어떻게 인간중심주의를 극복할 것인가이다. 특히 영화에 나타난 인공지능 시대에 대한 진단은 과학기술 진영에 비해 극히 비관적이다. 인공지능 영화들은 재앙의 가능성에 대한 경고를 인간중심주의에서 찾는 특징을 보여준다. 인공지능 담론에서 두드러진 인간중심주의의 논리는 개별 수행능력이 아니라 일반 능력에 있어 인간이 기계에 대해 갖는 우월성에 대한 확신으로 표현된다. 그러나 이 글은 인간의 일반 능력 자체가 불가해성에 의존하며 예측이나 검증이 불가능하다는 점에 근거하는 논리임을 주장한다. 일반 능력의 우월성과 확실성은 증명된바 없다. 이를 위해 이 논문은 최근에 개봉되어 많은 관심을 끈 인공지능영화 <엑스 마키나>에 대한 상세한 분석을 통해, 인공지능 시대 인간의 지적·감정적능력을 구현할 기계인간의 창조에 관한 전망이 불가능을 꿈꾸는 환상에 불과하며, 그 이면에는 여전히 남성에 의한 여성의 지배, 인종적 소수자에 대한 억압, 낯선 존재에 대한 타자화와 같은 지극히 모순적인 인간관계의 폐해가 고스란히 남아 있음을 밝힌다. Discourses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) abound with ambivalent attitudes concerning the future of humankind. These are the answers to the time old question as to whether AI will contribute to the advancement of human relation with man-made machines. Deep down in the AI discourses there lurks a fundamental problem of overcoming anthropocentrism. Especially in the realm of cinema, the so-called AI films consistently demonstrated serious concerns about the possible disasters men could neither program, nor predict, nor prevent. Proponents of AI technology rely on the unfounded belief in man`s superiority of general capability over AI`s specific performativity. This paper attempts to rebut this anthropocentric belief in the human perfectability: man`s general excellence must not be verified because of man`s impossibility to pre-program all the unpredictable variables; man is not the being of conscious but of unconscious and affect. In a detailed analysis of a recent AI film Ex Machina, this paper argues that the dream of making an affective AI constitutes a mere fantasy, while insisting that underneath the very fantasy there remain persistent anthropocentric problems concerning man`s mastery over woman, racial others, and alien beings.

이론비평'을 통한 비평이론 교육

강우성(Woosung Kang) 한국영미문학교육학회 2013 영미문학교육 Vol.17 No.3

This paper purports to present practical teaching models and curriculum of literary theory at a graduate level in Korea by examining the theoretical and pedagogical implications of what might be termed "Theory Criticism" in several academic journals in Anglophone culture for the past 10 years. Critically analysing the recent trends of theory studies, especially during the period after the so-called "the Death of Theory," I argue that journals devoted to theory demonstrated the significant change in doing theory in terms of thinking possibilities of political potentiality and cultural diversification of theory itself. Among various journals, Diacritics, Critical Inquiry, and Parallax are chosen for their consistent commitment to the theoretical discussion in the field of literary studies. Theoretical concerns of these journals after 2005 can best be classified under three categories: increasing political interest, continued devotion to cultural or aesthetic phenomena, and the renewed reflection on what makes a theory a theory. Current shifts in theory studies mark a crucial challenge to our literary theory education in Korea, where classroom situation now suffers a dire lack of the discipline in critical thinking amidst relative proliferation of critical discourse outside the academia. One way to overcome such an indigence of theoretical education in Korea may come from the lesson of recent political turn of theory in Anglophone studies. It is urgent as well as necessary to positively adopt the pedagogy of theory criticism while maintaining the text-based close reading in dealing with theoretical texts. For this task, I present three teaching models practically applicable in literary theory education in Korea: seminar on theory criticism, theoretical encounter with literary texts, and thematic approach to theory. As the case of actual teaching experience based on the thematic approach indicates, literary theory education via "theory criticism" proved not only viable but practicable as well. The aim of teaching literary theory should be geared to enhance none other than the faculty of critical thinking itself.

식민의 형이상학: 하와이 ‘태평양 오리엔탈리즘’ 비판

강우성 ( Woosung Kang ) 미국소설학회(구 한국호손학회) 2021 미국소설 Vol.28 No.1

This paper attempts to elucidate the complex historical developments of the so-called “metaphysics of colonialism,” aptly expressed in the ideology of “Pacific orientalism” concerning the tragic destiny of Hawaiian archipelago. In order to analyze the ups and downs of conceptual signification of Hawaiian “native sovereignty,” I explore the textual interpretation of Hanunani-Kay Trask’s nonfiction masterpiece, From a Native Daughter, in terms of its postcolonial critique of racialist neo-colonialism and the rhetorical delineation of native notion of cosmic familial connection. As a leading proponent of indigenous sovereignty of Hawaiian native islanders, Trask severely criticizes the deep-rooted self-image of the European-American white colonizers who like to justify their universality by subjugating and misrepresenting the native civilization as feudalism. She also pinpoints the absurd racialist assumption and the concomitant mystification of whites’ blood purity in the enlighten disciplines of the Western human sciences. Trask’s idea of Hawaiian sovereignty contains the two controversial aspects: the exclusive claim of native islanders over the forfeited land and the denial of immigrants’s right of being a host of Hawaiian archipelago. For her, sovereignty means the independence from the US, not a legal citizenship as a minority. Ironically, however, her claim of native’s exclusive land ownership and independence depends entirely on the good will of the US federal government and the conscientious international recognition. In this sense, Trask’s native sovereignty is, for all its vehemence and bitter animosity towards the white colonialism and immigrant ideology, at once a narrative of resistance and a rhetoric of surrender.

The Metaphysics of Paralogy : Lyotard's Postmodern Sublime

강우성(Woosung Kang) 한국비평이론학회 2003 비평과이론 Vol.8 No.2

다른 개념들의 운명과 비교했을 때 전통적으로 철학의 서자(庶子)였던 숭고(the sublime) 개념은 현대이론에서도 그 중요성을 그다지 인정받지 못했다. 근자에 들어서는 비교적 활발하게 논의의 중심에서 거론되는 편이지만, 숭고개념의 효용성에 대해서는 여전히 상당한 논란이 존재한다. ‘포스트모던 숭고’를 다루는 본 논문은 숭고 개념을 서양철학의 근본문제들과 연관시켜 사유한 리오따르의 문제의식을 살펴보고 그 함의를 따져보고자 한다. 칸트의 숭고 개념에 내재한 사유의 실마리를 섬세하게 풀어내는 리오따르의 탐구는 그 자체로도 높은 사유의 작용을 보여주지만, 그의 독특한 숭고 개념은 서양철학의 유구한 난제들, 예컨대 언어, 재현, 문학, 그리고 철학적 사유의 문제들을 숭고 행위에 내재된 ‘감정’(feeling)과 ‘부정성’(negativity)의 틀에서 새롭게 사유하는 점에서 더욱 돋보인다. 더욱이 칸트에서는 아름다움의 범주에 포섭되어인식론적 난점으로 여겨져 억압되었던 숭고 개념을 반성적 판단(reflective judgment)과 나아가 인간 인식 일반의 존재론적인 물음과 연관시킴으로써 숭고개념의 근본성을 주창하였다. 또한 리오따르는 숭고 개념이 시사하는 재현불가능의 문제를 근대 및 탈근대의 존재론적 상황과도 긴밀히 연관시켜서 그만의 독특한 탈근대론을 내놓기도 하였다. 재현행위를 ‘무엇의 재현’이라는 대상의존에서 벗어나게 하여 ‘재현불가능성의 재현’이라는 좀더 발견적(heuristic)이고 자기반성적인(tautegorical) 행위로 격상시켰다. 특히 그가 20세기 초엽의 소위 아방가르드 예술가들을 예로 들어 주창한 예술적 탈근대(artistic postmodernity) 개념은 재현불능의 존재론적 상황을‘감정’의 차원에서 구현하여 기술적 근대의 근원적인 결핍을 감지하게 만드는 사유행위를 지칭한다. 숭고의 개념에 투철한 탈근대 예술은 철학적 사유가 태동할때의 근원적 감정들이었던 ‘놀라움’(shock)과 ‘경이감’(wonder)에 접근하면서 예술이 ‘감정’과 관계함으로써 철학적 사유의 드높은 경지에 이를 수 있음을 보여준다. 따라서 숭고의 ‘감정’은 단순히 이성 및 기술의 변증법적 대립항이 아니라 그 대립항이 근저에서부터 결핍되어 있음을 알려주는 근본적인 존재의 느낌인 것이다.

‘이론 이후’의 문학에 어떤 희망이 가능한가?

강우성(Woosung Kang) 한국영미문학교육학회 2006 영미문학교육 Vol.10 No.1

  In the aftermath of the explosive proliferation of theories for some 30 years, it is now fashionable to refer to “the death of theory” as a way of expressing or reshaping the critical concerns about the future of literary studies. Some conservative critics insist that now is the time to return to the study of literary “text itself,” while literary theorists present the idea that it is impossible to do without theory even if we admit that literary theory can no longer be counted upon as the legitimate guide for literary scholars. After the decline of so-called “grand narratives” and after a few rounds of “free plays” by psychoanalysis and deconstruction, however, theory today definitely loses its intellectual attractiveness in many, if not all, fields of humanities. With these contentions and diagnoses, this paper argues that the recent appearance of discourses on the crisis of literature, which is based on the critique of the enthusiasm for literary theory turning sour, does not merit a full critical attention, because what the critics of “text itself” contend still presupposes a theory of their own, that is, an a-political formalism.<BR>  Moreover, even the critic like Karatani Kojin, who laments over the death of modern literature in the Western countries as well as countries like Korea and Japan, believes that it is not theory but the post-industrial society that assumes such a decisive threat to the future of literature. Focusing on the critical implications of deconstruction, especially the concept of literature in the deconstructive criticism, this thesis explores the way to refashion the status of literature and literary theory in the future. Literature takes a significant place in Derrida"s deconstruction, but not as an independent realm but rather as a signifier to unsettle and destabilize any kind of coherence. As a theory of what makes a theory a theory, deconstruction contributes to the demonstration of the necessary theoretical moment in every text. What matters is not to theorize whether theory is possible or desirable but to figure out the way to develop a theory about the theoretical moment of literary text itself. Deconstruction would feature only a first step.