최수철의 <무정부주의자의 사랑> 고(考)

A Study on Choi, Soo Cheol’ s Novel Love of Anarchist

The collapse of socialist states and the decline of a developmental view of history made Korean intellectuals wander without orientation in the 1990s. This intellectual fashion of the day was called postmodernism in the wide sense. Choi, Soo Cheol understood this tragic situation of the day and paid attention to anarchism in order to seek a new vision as a substitute, which had challenged every state power and authority under the name of absolute individual liberty. Choi, Soo Cheol attempted to write a new style romance, Love of Anarchist, under the anarchistic vision. This novel brings confusion to the common readers by surpassing the horizon of expectations about novels. Love of Anarchist is not a love story of an anarchist, but an anatomy of a general love story. Thus, the writer or the narrator suggests episodes of love and self-examination simultaneously. We can deduce from this so-called metafiction that Choi, Soo Cheol rejected methodology of traditional love story as an oppressive old device and tried to narrate a discourse of sex directly as an anarchistic romance. Choi, Soo Cheol seems to expect that these attempts will bring the stories of love closer to the actual action of love, which eventually allows people to praise the freedom in life, escaping from the outdated sexual consciousness. Though it is difficult to say that Choi, Soo Cheol s attempts were fully successful, we shall be able to endow Love of Anarchist with anarchistic meaning in vision-absent 1990s.