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Baek Cheol's Cultural Capital and Social Capital －Focusing on 'Habitus', 'Distinction' and 'Reliability'－

  • Korean Language & Literature
  • 2013, (87), pp.283-312
  • Publisher : Korean Language & Literature
  • Research Area : Humanities > Korean Language and Literature

Kim Hye-won 1

1전북대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In this report, I examined the literary life of Baek Cheol and its fruit using the theories and issues of culture theory; ‘cultural capital’ and ‘social capital’. In terms of ‘capital’ throughout his life, first, his ‘economic capital’ was low as a middle class of petty bourgeois, with parent of tenant farmer. However, his ‘embodied cultural capital’ as quite a lot thanks to his eldest brother, Baek Se-myoung, who had realized modern thoughts. Furthermore his ‘capital of academic background’ had been powerful since he studied in Dokyo College of Education, Japan in 1927. Those ‘institutionalized cultural capital’ made it possible that he built his ‘social capital’ as a journalism critic in the literary world after colonization after he came back to Korea. And he went through the KAPF Arrest while he was involved in KAPF, and was transformed into pro-Japanese with his announcement of conversion. Thereafter he built his ‘cultural capital’ and ‘social capital’ as a critic of literary history with keeping himself away from journalism in the literary world after liberation. He called himself ‘neutralist’ while the literary world was divided into two worlds; left and right ideology, and he built his ‘objectified cultural capital’ publishing 『Introduction to Literature』 in 1947 and 『Research of History of Chosun New Literature』 in 1948. In the literary world after division, he built his ‘cultural capital’ and ‘social capital’ as a university professor. In 1957, he became exchange professor with invitation of the U.S. State Department and in 1959 he became a pioneer of new criticism translating 『Theory of Literature』 of R. Wellek and A. Warren. It was his ‘habitus’, ‘distinction’ and ‘reliability’ that made it possible that he obtained and held his enormous ‘capital’. His timeserving․opportunistic 'habitus' made him convert to pro-Japanese, ‘welcomism’ and defector to the South, for the sake of success and fame. And he took a strategy of ‘distinction’ by choosing neutral, aloof from Im-hwa and Kim dong-ri, and academic criticism, new criticism, aloof from journalism. Finally he obtained the enormous prestige as one of literary power holders on the basis of ‘connections’ and ‘reliability’ in his human relationship. However it deserves criticism that his career as a critic played a part in creating the coloniality of Korean modern literature while he was building his ‘symbolic capital’ and holding a hegemony of literary power as a critic, critic of literary history and professor.

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