몸과 질병의 관점에서 『지리산』 읽기 (Illness and Literature: on Body Discourse in Lee, Pyungjoo’s Jiri-San(Mt. Jiri))

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 부산대학교 인문학연구소
· 수록지 정보 : 코기토 / 70권 / 225 ~ 248페이지
· 저자명 : 이경

초록

이 글은 종래 이데올로기에 함몰된 반공소설이라는 평가를 받아 왔던 이병주의 『지리산』을 질병과 몸의 관점에서 해석함으로써 소설의의의와 한계를 재구성해 보고자 하였다. 질병을 매개로 정신을 중시하고 몸을 도구화하는 빨치산과 몸 속에 정신이 있으며 질병이 삶의 한형태라고 인식하는 비빨치산의 대립양상에 착안하여 인간과 몸을 도구화한 이데올로기의 폭력을 드러내는 동시에 유아론과 동일자적 연대로 귀결되는 반공이데올로기의 한계를 규명할 수 있었다.
『지리산』은 이데올로기의 폭력과 몸에 대한 성찰이라는 의의에도불구하고 유아론으로 수렴되는 한계를 드러낸다. 이데올로기의 대립을 이데올로기와 몸의 대립으로 바꾸어냄으로써 선취된 몸담론의 의의는 개별자적 몸의 발견에 그칠 뿐 상호육체성에는 이르지 못한다.
취약한 몸에 대한 통찰은 타자의 발견이라는 상호육체성의 윤리로 나아가지 못하는 것이다. 몸과 질병이라는 프리즘은 이데올로기의 폭력성뿐 아니라 유아론적 몸담론에 대한 반성이 전제되어 있지 않은 서사의 결락지점 또한 뚜렷이 노정하고 있다.

영어초록

Lee, Pyungjoo’s Jiri-San has been understood as an typical anti-communism literature all this while. This study, however, explicates the novel from different point of view based on the body discourse, which emphasizes the ethics of intercorporéité. The diseases described in the novel can provide excellent clues for such understanding. Along the ideological standpoints, the characters attache different meanings to their diseases. The communist partisans, who are defeated to Jiri-San, conceptualize their bodies as tools for their ideological struggle, and the diseases of their bodies as obstacles for glorious victory against the capitalists, which must be gotten rid of as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the non-partisans try to accept the diseases of their bodies as a kind of their destiny, which constitute their own lives.
The novel’s body discourse does not change such conceptions until the partisans are confronted with extreme situation, which they can never continue their struggle any more.
The diseases make their bodies resist against the subjects‘ reasoning minds. Their beliefs that the mind can control the body is replaced with the reversed ones: the mind can’t help but surrendering to the body’s stringent order toward its surviving. At this point, the novel does not describe the triumph of the capitalist ideology against the communist one as many critics have said, but the victory of the body over the reason and mind.
But, the novel does not go further. It is entrapped in the solipsism. The two groups in the novel are converged each other into the recognition of the existence of bodies through their illnesses, the implication of which they constitute to their diseases. The novel’s success ends here. The characters fail to understand the ethics of intercorporéité of Merleau-Ponti’s meaning. The real value of the finding the body lies in the fact that it can open the possibilities for mutual understanding and caring of the others, which the novel does not try to inquire any more.

참고자료

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