청소년 인권 활동가들의 생애사를 통해 본 실존적 탐색과 역사적 자아의 재구성

Abstract

This study explores the actions and the process of identification of youth human rights activists through two activists’ lives. It then draws educational implications uncovered in the journey of their actions from the perspective of Hannah Arendt. As a long-term follow-up study, two fieldworks were conducted between 2007 and 2022, shedding light on the life histories of the two participants, who have played active roles for 15 years from their adolescence to adulthood in youth movements. By escaping from the school system, they resisted standardized orders of being “student-like” and the academic elitism in Korean society, showing their existential struggles to participate in the world as “subjects of action.” The participants, who chose to be social minorities, had to spend their adulthood enduring social, economic, and psychological instabilities. Nevertheless, they tried to interpret their actions as meaningful narratives of youth activism, which have been linked to their own lives, the lives of others, and their communities. Through the journey of these actions, they have identified their existences as subjects to realize their unique “natality” and subjects of praxis to create history and culture. In the course of shedding new light on their life histories from an educational point of view, the authors suggest that the space for educational action needs to be reconstructed as an open space for communication, respecting diverse voices and differences of youth as subjects of action, participating in a world with unique natality.