This thesis has as an objective to interpret the poststructural conditions manifested in Ha Geun-chan’s novels via layers of the theory of human. If existing researches limited the interpretation of Ha Geun-chan’s novels within a simple framework ...
This thesis has as an objective to interpret the poststructural conditions manifested in Ha Geun-chan’s novels via layers of the theory of human. If existing researches limited the interpretation of Ha Geun-chan’s novels within a simple framework of postwar literature, this thesis expands the frame and observes the change of narrative principles revealed in Ha Geun-chan’s novels and studies consequently how main individuals react to the violence of great ideologies.
Essentially discourses of power suppress individuals and eliminate their experiences of violence. As the memories of violence become a blur in the network of “signifier-signified,” individuals are sacrificed and forgotten. In Ha Geun-chan’s novels, such conditions are composed in various angles. Ha Geun-chan was a prolific writer who produced a countless number of works over a long period of creativity. So, his works differed in the layers of meaning in chronological order, the early, middle and late period. This study seeks, within the change of the layers of meaning, the method of how individuals react to or resist discourses of power. To trace the changes allows one to understand Ha Geun-chan’s novels, but it also provides a sociological study on how one’s experiences of ideological violence, or the war in the Korean peninsula, affected individuals.
As the criteria to clarify the changes of individuals in Ha Geun-chan’s novels, this researcher chose theories by Korean literature researches as well as methodologies of poststructural philosophers represented by Gille Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Slavoj Zizek, and Mari Oka. Above-mentioned views are suggested as alternatives to structural discourses that play a role of maintaining and mending the existing power, and the continuous accomplishment of the alternatives can be an accomplishment or aspiration found in the trend of poststructuralism.
Such movements of poststructuralism are reenacted as they are in the interior world of Ha Geun-chan’s novels. To interpret such conditions within the system of poststructural discourses will be a significant project in interpreting the originality and uniqueness of the narrative development style of Ha Geun-chan’s novels. This way of interpretation can provide a chance to remove a kind of faulty skin off the Ha Geun-chan novels known as the postwar literature. The process can expand the basis of humanism by reflecting that poststructural narrations intended by Ha Geun-chan’s novels are revealed through individuals’ problems, and in the end the intention of Ha Geun-chan’s novels is named as the humanism of poststructuralism. However, that the denotation of the word humanism is too limited and at the same time too broad to be the subject of study is noted as a problem, therefore humanism is juxtaposed with a theory of humanity. The word is juxtaposed as a theory of humanity refers to humanism as a way of individuals reacting and resisting the discourses of the exiting power.
As a result, conclusions are as follows. First, the principal agent of Ha Geun-chan’s novels experiences a consistent conflict against the subject of power. Second, the conflict is materialized as one-way violence of the subject of power. Third, the resolution of the conflict structuralizes multi-layered networks of meaning as it interconnects with the time of the novel’s creation. Fourth, the structure of multi-layered networks of meaning is formed with the methodology of poststructuralism.
Based on the above results, it is known that the narrative subjects of Ha Geun-chn’s novels reveal their wills to fight against the subject of power and its enormous violence. The manifestation of such fighting wills connotes a center of humanism inherent in deep concerns about humanity. Conclusively, Ha Geun-chan’s novels can become a new genre of a theory of humanity that can substitute humanism.
Keywords: Ha Geun-chan, a theory of humanity, humanism, poststructuralism, deterritorialization, principle agent, discourse of power, memories