의미의 존재론에 대한 소고

A Thought on the Ontology of a Meaning: Towards A Hermeneutics of Transgression and Silence

This study starts with a question that examines the secondary status of translation and interpretation vis-a-vis literary creation. It discusses the polar opposite perspectives on the ontology of a textual meaning: the Gadamerian vs. the Barthesian hermeneutics. These perspectives, albeit to different degrees, tend to locate the act of interpretation in an idealized space premised on an absolute freedom and equality of the interpreting agent. This study, however, views both creating and understanding of a text as a secular and unavoidably political act taking place within multiple interpretive communities. Viewed from this perspective, a textual meaning does not take the form of a whole, homogeneous, sealed-off entity but a struggle among diverse social groups. It is an on-going process in which, as Bakhtin maintains, each group endeavors to inscribe its own significance even at the micro-level of a sign. Based on this idea, this study delineates the task of a postcolonial literary criticism. Spivak’s notions of selvedge and rhetoricity, along with Macherey’s idea of a symptomatic text, help bring to light the possibility of reading a silence within a text or reading a text against itself. The mission of a postcolonial criticism, therefore, lies not only in foregrounding the diverse relationships among the interacting social groups that take a hand in the textual signification but also in revealing the marginalized or even foreclosed presence of subaltern groups which could not take part in the signifying process. A case in point is Kurtz’s black mistress in Heart of Darkness who had to disappear after lending her mute body to her Western sister.