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Views and Representation ― A Symptomatic Reading of 'Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori'

Young-bae Lee 1

1전남대학교

ABSTRACT

This study aims to depart from religious aspects of 'Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori' as much as possible and identify colonialism and otherness implicated in the narrative of 'Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori'. At the same time, it also tries to analyze the meaning, relationship and conflict structures of 'Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori'. 'Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori' shows modernity symptoms, ethnic symptoms, colonial symptoms, capitalistic symptoms and civilizational symptoms. The symptoms are based on the territories of various political entities, states, ideologies, imperialism, market and culture respectively. However, the study focuses on civilizational, ethnic and colonial symptoms to determine their cultural meanings, that is, meanings of representation and views, colonialism in ideology and mind, and the violence of imperialism. In fact, regarding the restoration of 'Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori,' several critical examinations have been made about the restoration times and their political intentions in the light of the thematic framework of ‘made traditions’ or ‘origins and birth,’ which is already common in academia. However, those studies have mainly focused on the performance environment as well as ritual and shamanistic traditions and performance forms in the context of local history. In a sense, it can be said that while the understanding of the text is still transcendent, essential or original, that of the outside of the text is modern, constructive and thus double-layered. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the gap, and a variety of interpretations of the text can be considered as a solution. Given that folklore is accompanied by shifts in paradigms due to the influence of continuity, variation and selection, especially of epistemological breakage, studies on Tallori’s performance text should be given due consideration of the performance forms in alignment with the times and the points of time in content changes. Even though 'Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori' was one of the cultural practices under the Japanese colonial regime, it is thought that its performance forms still have in it or around it newly organized and assigned ideologies and desires of the partaker, performer and audience amidst the collapsed Chosun society’s ideological and cultural foundations. Hence, it is possible to identify the states and natures of the potentiality, though partial, when an examination is made on the aspects of the breakage that retroacts to the Japanese colonial period when the performance of 'Hahoe Byeolsingut Tallori' was banned.

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.