총체적 해석론의 한계 - 『정치적 무의식』의 해체론적 읽기

The Limit of Totalistic Interpretation ― A Deconstructive Reading of The Political Unconscious

&nbsp;&nbsp;This essay aims at reading Fredric Jameson&quot;s The Political Unconscious in conjunction with a deconstructive reading of Derrida and de Man, focusing on the issue of the relationship between the narrative(and more broadly, language) and the history(and/or social reality). Jameson&quot;s project in this seminal book is ambitious to the extent that he attempts to incorporate all thinkable critical methods into his own assumption of new Marxian interpretation. Jameson contends that the projects of formalism, structuralism and post-structuralism, lacking an authentic notion of history and the notion of diachrony, are required to be inevitably imprisoned within the boundary of what he has termed the linguistic model, ultimately translating all narrative forms into the axis of synchrony. Jameson&quot;s final touchstone to evaluate any theories arises from his elaboration on the issue of diachrony and historicity.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;In an attempt to re-consider the notion of history, Jameson is much indebted to Lacan&quot;s elucidation of the relationship of the symbolic and the real. But a certain dilemma of Lacan&quot;s seemingly seminal examination of Freudian psychoanalysis, reproduces itself in Jameson&quot;s theory of totalistic interpretation. The Political Unconscious provides a new hermeneutics of narrative, situating narrative as a socially symbolic act, adding that the narrative representation of &quot;History&quot; necessarily involves the process of what he terms a strategy of containment. As for Jameson, interpretation is always an essentially allegorical act, insofar as all readings make a sort of rewriting of a given text. Herein lies a problematic and significant comparison between Jameson&quot;s totalistic hermeneutics and both Derrida&quot;s and de Man&quot;s deconstructive hermeneutics. Siding with Derrida and de Man, this essay addresses itself to the (dis)advantages of Jameson&quot;s elaboration on reading and interpretation, since, following de Man, the final reading is impossible due to the unreadability of the prior narration.