근대, 그 탈주의 언저리에서 : Escape and Return in Umberto Eco 움베르토 에코의 탈주와 복귀의 여정 = On the Edge of Escape from Modernity

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The main aim of this essay is to ask how we ought to understand the concept of modernity. Modernity is one of the biggest topics with which we are faced in our so-called post-modern society. What "post" can imply here is "escape" or "surpass"; accordingly, the post-modern society in which we believe ourselves to live should be located beyond "modern" society. What is at stake here is the question of what "modern (ity)" is. This question is deeply disquieting, specifically in the situation of the 90s, because, at least in Korean society, however rich and heated the discourse of postmodernity, the problem of what the object of the "escape" should be has not been discussed properly. Furthermore, it is possible to say that Korean society still has not so much "modern" as "pre-modern" status. I shall discuss this issue, which seems too huge to be considered in this small essay, with special reference to Umberto Eco's general intellectual itinerary.
Eco started his studies with medieval philosophy, which is characterised by research for the centre, as it were, but he made a dramatic escape from it. This was particularly the case in his original book Opera aperta (1962) and his other "pre-semiotic" works. This period of living outside the centre or system did not last long, however. His "pre-semiotic" period ended when his interest in a semiotic system started, with La struttura assente (1968), though this work still sustained the decentered, open, attitude to the world. His brief escape ended up by establishing the empire of semiotics, in which the "text" plays the omnipotent role in explaining the relationship between the author and the reader, between the fictional world and the actual world. This can be called "text-centrism", according to which we seem to have to search for the deep structure; that is, the code of codes, the general structure of structures. Eco's semiotics is nothing other than a system for establishing the code and structure for this meta-structure and meta-code. It is thus natural that the more he stresses the system the more separated from reality he becomes. The only concern in his semiotics is internal coherence, rather than sociohistorical context. As a result, the text imprisons interpretation and thereby isolates it from reality.
Now we need to ask why and how to escape from this text-centrism once again, and what the destination of this escape should be. Plainly, one could answer that it should be the encounter of the text with the actual world, which can never be involved in the area of the text. But for the ultimate destination, we should insist neither on the actual world nor on the text; rather we need to consider the place in which the text and the actual world encounter and associate with each other. By establishing this place and figuring out its methodological actualisation, rather than by negating the text alone, text-centrism can be destroyed from within.
At this stage, the conscious subject becomes important as the agent for operating this process. One might say that to postulate the conscious subject itself is merely to return to modernity, because consciousness is a product of "modern reason". But here we need to differentiate between "post-modern reason" and "modern reason", inasmuch as the former aims to establish new kinds of reason repeatedly, whereas the latter is confined to relying on pre-established reason. In other words, the former tends to escape constantly from the centre, whereas the latter remains only within the centre. The conscious subject, therefore, is required to establish new forms of reason.
Precisely here we find that Eco's "pre-semiotic" period was a short yet devastatingly effective escape from all kinds of centrisms. This is so because in this period we can recognise Eco's persistent discussion of the conscious subject as an agent for associating reality and the text. This was possible precisely by maintaining the "controlled, intended and theorised irrationality" which can be aroused from "post-modern" reason. In its unstoppable search for its possible worlds, reason becomes our limit and at the same time our potential. What really matters here is how to negate dogmatic reason and to look for endlessly new forms of reason. This is possible by maintaining that process; that is to say, both start and end of the escape should be negated and instead the process of the escape, its Sisyphean endeavour - in its existentialist meaning, should exist there. This is what is meant by staying on the edge of escape from modernity.O

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 무엇이 문제인가
• Ⅱ. 근대로부터의 탈주
• Ⅲ. 복귀의 현주소
• Ⅳ. 기호학의 근대성
• Ⅴ. 이성과 주체
• Ⅵ. 에덴동산에서
• Ⅶ. 컨텍스트와 새로운 이성
• Ⅷ. 탈주는 끊임없는 허물벗기다.