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The Ethics of the others and the sympathy of Novels

Suk Ja Park 1

1서강대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study was to analyze the viewpoint and formative mechanism of novel reproducing the issue of residents ousted from redevelopment districts based on Yoon Heung‐gil’s A Man Left as Nine Pairs of Shoes. As known well, this novel deals with the incident of Gwangju new town recorded as the first urban poor struggle. First, in this novel, residents ousted from redevelopment districts are reproduced as weird and loathing figures. As suggested by the title, the sign of excess ‘nine pairs of shoes’ itself is used as a heterogeneous and bizarre rhetoric, and this view is primarily triggered by the order and interference of ‘policemen’ who appear from the early part of the story, and secondarily it is combined with the fear of petty bourgeois who are not free from statist interference. From the narrator’s reflective view, however, the image of native (criminals)is transformed from loathing figures to the objects of compassion. By transcribing the confessions of residents ousted from redevelopment districts into the novel, the author reveals the real situation and personal truth of the demonstration. As a result, this cracks the novel’s structural coherence of first‐person‐observer point of view, but it also reveals the ironical aspect that residents ousted from redevelopment districts become criminals for their right to existence. By reproducing the issue of residents ousted from redevelopment districts, this novel graphically describes the dilemmatic situation of petty-bourgeois/residents ousted from redevelopment districts who desire ‘the right to existence/sovereignty’ in the fear of statism.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.