방법론적 모델로서의 구조: 데리다의 구조 해체에 대한 기호학적 비판

최문수(Moonsoo Choi) 한국비평이론학회 2006 비평과이론 Vol.11 No.1

  We can apprehend and explain a given object only through its model since we have no direct epistemological access to reality, natural or cultural. The model ranges from a simple cognitive schema to a highly complicated operative tool. Structure is the system of connections which links up parts within an ordered whole, and functions as such a model especially when it comes to objects involving relations among their elements. But, for Derrida, the concept of structure is misleading and to be deconstructed. The structure cannot be a pure methodological tool since it is a metaphysical concept. Through the principle of presence, metaphysics necessarily endows the discourse with truth value by organizing it into a centered and fixed totality, which is a structure.<BR>  However, Derrida"s deconstruction of structure turns out to be problematic because his conception of sign, the element of the structure, cannot account for the fact that the sign is formal and dynamic at the same time, which allows the structure to be a form not permanently fixed by a certain truth value. Peirce"s doctrine of sign and phenomenology show that, unlike Derrida"s thesis, the sign proper is not another metaphysical concept, the stable union of the intelligible and the sensible, but solely an intelligible form whose dynamicity arises from the translatability or interpretability between culturally constructed and operative forms. Besides, the distinction of the intelligible and the sensible is necessary to the function of the sign. The sign proper is the general-intelligible form (type-sign), according to which its individual-sensible actualization (token-sign) is repeatedly produced and identified as a sign.<BR>  Derrida criticizes all the formalist schemata in that they rely upon Empiricism, whose appeal to experience is necessarily involved with the principle of presence, and whose scientific objectivism reveals its pursue of truth value. This critique presupposes that perception, the base of all experience is intuitional. But perception is, as Peirce shows, not intuitional but inferential. In fact, perception is a form of signification, an iconic one whose resultant meaning is the cognitive schema of the given object. And any signification entails interpretation as it is dependent upon the interpretative act, which is performed as a form of inference, namely, abduction. Consequently, perception and hence experience are interpretative, which means they are fallible and tentative. The structure is then not a metaphysical illusion involving invariable truth. Rather, it is interpretative and must be taken as a fallible and tentative form. As an interpretation of reality, the structure is a methodological tool, an apprehensive and explicative model of the object.

The Polysemy of Scripture: A Semiotic Approach to Scriptural Interpretation

최문수(Choi, Moonsoo) 동덕여자대학교 인문과학연구소 2013 人文科學硏究 Vol.21 No.-

스피노자에게 성서해석의 임무는 저자의 의도를 찾아내는 것이다. 왜냐하면 저자의 의도된 의미 만에 유일하게 타당한 의미이기 때문이다. 그는 특히 언어적 문맥과 상황적 문맥을 중시하는데, 이는 문맥이 저자의 의미가 애매하거나 불확실 한 경우 해당 표현의 의미를 문자적으로 해석할지 또는 비유적으로 해석할지 판단하는 기준이 되기 때문이다. 반면에 어거스틴은 저자의 의도를 넘어선 성서의 다의성을 인정한다. 하지만 그가 인정하는 다의성은 신학적 원리, 즉 신앙과 도덕성의 원리에 의해 교조적으로 결정되는 고정된 다의성이다. 해체론을 주장하는 데리다에 따르면 저자의 의도에 의해 권위가 부여되는 특권적 의미도 텍스트 외부의 원리에 의해 결정되는 고정된 의미도 불가능하다. 코드와 문맥의 고정성을 비판하는 데리다에게 의미과정이란 무한한 차연의 연속이고, 따라서 성서의 의미는 특정한 문맥으로 결정될 수 없는 무한한 다의성에 열려있게 된다. 하지만 에코의 주장처럼 코드는 사실상 역동적이고 따라서 비록 그로인해 하나의 텍스트가 잠재적으로 무한한 해석을 허용하지만, 동시에 해석의 최소 조건으로서 언어적 문맥을 요구한다. 결국 성서의 다의성은 역동적이지만 언어적 문맥에 의해 제한된다고 할 수 있다. For Spinoza the task of the interpretation of Scripture is to find the intention of the author in that the author's intended meaning is the only proper meaning. He stresses the function of the linguistic context and the situational context, which is needed to decide whether the literal meaning should be retained or replaced with the figural meaning when the author's intended meaning is ambiguous or obscure. On the other hand, Augustine suggests the possibility of multiple meaning of Scripture beyond the author's intention. Augustine's principle is however dogmatic and based upon the theology of the Catholic Church, the rules of faith and morality. This means that the polysemy of Scripture is fixed by the dogmatic rules. According to Derrida, representative of deconstructive reading, there can be neither privileged meaning by the author's intention nor fixed meaning by extra-textual rules. For him, signification lies in a limitless chain of différance, and hence interpretation becomes a process of infinite regression. Scripture is then inexhaustible and open to polysemy without limit. As Eco states, however, although a text allows potentially unlimited interpretations by virtue of the dynamic nature of the code, it requires a minimal condition of interpretation, which is the linguistic context. The polysemy of Scripture is therefore dynamic but limited by the linguistic context.

[해외시 읽기] ‘가능성들의 장’으로서의 시

최문수(Moonsoo Choi) 시와세계 2007 시와세계 Vol.- No.17

The structurally self-reflexive poetry may hold local meanings but does not allow them to be synthesized into an overarching meaning, conceptual or perceptual; it lacks any necessary integrating rule. The parts are organized so that they have multiple and undeterminable relationships with each other. This state or compositional principle can be described as the multiple and equally valid polarity of the field of possibilities. A number of 20th century’s poetic texts belong to this mode of the field of possibilities, which embraces any non-mimetic poems, whether they retain the discursive system or not, including John Ashbery, Gertrude Stein, Ray Dipalma, Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews. This poetic mode however differentiates itself not only from the traditional illusion-making poetry but the poems whose self-reflexiveness is simply achieved by directly and coherently narrating their own compositional principle. When it comes to discursive poetry, the field of possibilities requires the narrative incoherency, which relies on the disruption of the discursive level. Unlike the common misconception, however, the device of juxtaposition does not guarantee an inconsistent narrative because the disjunctive operation of juxtaposition is confined to the surface of the text. A poetic text may have a deep, say, connotative level, at which seemingly disconnected denotative meanings can be connected with each other. And these hidden connections can make possible a full narrative consistency. For non-discursive poetry, the field of possibilities is produced when perceptual meanings claim their own semantic value without being subject to a certain conceptual topic, hence without being mimetic as in pattern poetry or shaped poetry.

‘이디오그램’

최문수(Choi, Moonsoo) 새한영어영문학회 2012 새한영어영문학 Vol.54 No.2

The question of whether Pound"s poetry is a whole hinges upon what sort of logic it involves. Some critics regard it as a heap of fragments without any integrating principle. Perloff, particularly, puts it into the category of "collage poetry" and characterizes it as having no "deep" level of meaning but metonymic play of literal meanings on a flat surface. Perloff is right in that like a collage it gathers different "things" from different contexts and juxtaposes them without any coherent order of narrative. But she overlooks the possibility of unity through an intrinsic, organic logic stemming from the poetic elements themselves. In fact, Pound’s poetry realizes such an organic, immanent logic, which corresponds to the order of nature, what he calls "natural processes." His main critical concepts, "Image," "Vortex," and "Ideogram" all concern his idea of poetic form and hence logic. Among them "Ideogram," which is developed from the others, satisfies his final idea that poetry should be like Chinese ideogram that he believes actualizes "natural processes," whereby things are constantly reunited in new wholes according to their functions. As an "Ideogram," therefore, Pound"s poetry can be seen as a temporary whole, a dynamic and open-ended structure that is neither a complete unity nor a heap of fragments.

전통시 교육과 극적상황

최문수(Moonsoo Choi) 한국영미문학교육학회 2014 영미문학교육 Vol.18 No.3

The meanings in a traditional poem are integrated into the speaker's attitude, in that, unlike in traditional novels and dramas, events or states are not simply conveyed but are related to by the speaker. This attitude as the speaker's subjective reaction necessarily lies within a specific and concrete situation, which is the dramatic situation where the speaker is currently saying. In this light, the concept of 'dramatic situation' serves as the way of teaching students the general feature of traditional poetry as dramatic speech act, i.e., the speaker's utterance as action enacted in a specific situation with specific intentions. In the interpretative process of poetry, the context develops itself from a loose one to a tight one, functioning both as tentative rule for verifying a hypothesized meaning and as meaning itself to be verified through a further phase of context. The dramatic situation works as the first phase of the context because it is the network of relatively simple and clear information about the speaker. Students thus need to first understand it, on the ground of which they can form proper hypotheses about more complicated and ambiguous meanings. It can be divided into three types on the basis of whether it involves a sub-situation and in terms of what tense and person the speaker is saying in. Being the indices for the degree and the aspect of the speaker's subjective involvement, those types can help students access poetry more proficiently and systematically.

전통시 해석의 원리와 과정

최문수(Moonsoo Choi) 한국영미문학교육학회 2013 영미문학교육 Vol.17 No.3

A problem that teachers face in traditional poetry classes is that most students take poetry as too difficult to interpret on their own. They are very likely to rely on other's interpretations, usually found on the internet, and accept them uncritically. This is just because they have never learned how to interpret poetry. Teachers, I would argue, then need to teach and train them how to interpret poetry as well as to explain their interpretation. For that purpose I suggest a systematic examination of the interpretative principle and process of traditional poetry. Being a coherent narrative text, traditional poetry can be viewed as a hierarchically leveled structure where a semantic level is summarized into an upper, more abstract level. The hierarchical levels reflect interpretative process, but the real steps of interpretation does not follow a linear process. Rather, the levels are interconnected in a continuous coming and going. The same happens for the parts within a level, especially, the discursive structure. Interpretation is based upon a kind of inference, abduction, with which the reader forms a hypothesis about the context and tests it in the course of his further reading, which necessarily involves a continuous coming and going. The hypothesized context functions as the tentative rule for explaining the meanings of the given part in accordance with its logical consistency. If the context turns out to be invalid, the reader should form a revised hypothesis so that all the meanings can be coherently explained under it. The interpretation of traditional poetry is therefore a process going back and forth with the repetitive cycle of forming, testing and reforming hypothesized contexts.

Herder and Hamman on Kant’s Notion of Reason

최문수(Choi, Moonsoo) 동덕여자대학교 인문과학연구소 2018 人文科學硏究 Vol.25 No.1

칸트는 지식의 영역을 물자체가 아닌 감각경험의 대상인 현상에 국한시킴으로써 회의적인 경험론의 비판과 독단적인 합리주의의 한계를 극복하고 이성을 모든 지식과 형이상학의 명백하고 초월적인 토대로 유지시킨다. 하지만 헤르더에 따르면 칸트는 언어의 인지 기능을 부정하고 이성과 언어와 불가분의 관계를 간과한다. 이성은 구체적인 정황 속에 자리하는 언어와 항상 결부됨으로써 칸트의 주장처럼 경험을 초월하여 보편적일 수 없다는 것이다. 하만은 언어가 근본적으로 애매하기 때문에 선험적인 것과 경험적인 것, 분석적 판단과 종합적 판단 사이의 명백한 구분이 불가능하며, 이 구분에 의존하는 순수이성 역시 불가능하고 따라서 이성은 모든 지식의 초월적 토대로 작동할 수 없다고 주장한다. By limiting the scope of knowledge to objects of experience, Kant retains reason as the clear and transcendental basis for knowledge and metaphysics, which escapes not only skeptical materialism but also the dogmatism of rationalism. For Herder, Kant’s notion of reason is problematic because it denies the cognitive function of language and the unseparable relationship of reason with language. Reason then cannot be universal because it involves language situated in concrete given conditions. For Hamman, language’s ambiguity does not admit the strict distinction between a priori and a posteriori, and reason, whose objects consists only in the subject, cannot carry out synthetic judgements and consequently cannot be pure and serve as the basis for all knowledge.

The Dynamism of Gertrude Stein’s Poetic Language

최문수(Choi, Moonsoo) 동덕여자대학교 인문과학연구소 2017 人文科學硏究 Vol.24 No.-

물질성과 역동성 등 시대를 앞선 혁신적 양상으로 인해 포스트모던 시의 전조로 여겨지는 스타인의 시 언어는, 흔히 외부현실과 무관한 자족적인 언어 즉 비재현적인 언어로, 때로는 심지어 의미가 없는 언어로 간주되기도 한다. 하지만 언어는 원래 고정된 시스템이 아니라 여러 의미를 낳을 수 있는 역동적인 시스템이며, ‘지속적인 현재’의 개념을 바탕으로 개방된 연상과 물질성을 내세우는 스타인의 시 언어는 이러한 역동성이 최대한으로 발휘되고 있는 예라 할 수 있다. 따라서 그녀의 언어는 비재현적이거나 의미와 무관한 언어라기보다는 다양한 개념적, 지각적 의미들이 유희하는 언어라고 해야 할 것이다. Stein’s innovative poetic language is often counted as non-representational, sometimes even as nonsensical because its materiality and dynamism make it seem to dispense with conventional linguistic meanings. Language in general, however, is not a fixed system but a dynamic structure allowing multiple meanings. Stein’s poetic language is an example where the dynamism and the polysemy of language are maximized by means of its open associations and foregrounded materiality. Her poetic language is therefore an linguistic play of multiple meanings, conceptual or perceptual, rather than a non-epresentational or nonsensical language.