[Feature] Re-Organizing Revolution / Kang Kyung-seok
The Quarterly Changbi 188, Summer 2020
Abstract
The Feature “What Is Our Literature Struggling With Now?” confirms that Korean literature has been expanding its points of contact with reality, and is gaining new vitality, while dismantling existing thoughts, knowledge, and affects. It also illuminates the remarkable ways in which authors are engaging in struggles in this scene of literary transformation. Based on an understanding that the Candlelight Revolution in Hwang Jung-eun’s fiction is a concept that includes “revolution of the revolution,” Kang Kyung-seok questions the “flat” argument made by some, which equates the adjudication of presidential impeachment with the Candlelight Revolution. While analyzing how the ongoing Candlelight Revolution is related to contemporary fiction and criticism, Kang examines various aspects of literary imagination that try to detach themselves from our ordinary, conventional constitution. Through this process, he newly highlights the meaning of literary condemnation and the overcoming of an unjust reality and argues for the importance of searching for what will come next, based on our current situation.