애도의 우울증적 반복강박과 흩어진 사지의므네모시네: 5·18, 사면, 그리고 아비 바르부르크

Abstract

Characterizing cinematic representations of May 18 Democratization Movement in 1980 and extant studies of the former in terms of ‘melancholic repetition compulsion of mourning,’ this article pinpoints the special amnesty granted to Ex-President Chun Doo-hwan in 1997 as its obscene historical condition of possibility. Made possible by the then President-elect-cum-the-symbolic-representative-of-victims Kim Dae-jung’s consent, this legal amnesty effectively results in the foreclosure of the traumatic massacre perpetrated in Gwangju, May 1980 within the field of legal battles, whereby nullifying the tenuous Freudian distinction between ‘mourning’ and ‘melancholia.’ This articles argues that, doomed to repeat its failure, this ‘repetition compulsion of mourning’ forced the energy reserved for mourning work to ‘migrate’ from the field of ‘fact’ and ‘documentary’ to that of ‘fiction,’ more precisely by means of aphasic ‘contiguity disorder,’ which also accounts for why death among numerous films in the latter vein is rendered less ‘tragic’ than in travesty. By way of what Aby Warburg calls “migration of images” and ‘pathosformel,’ this paper critically reflects on how the desire for self-amputation betrayed by a series of figures connects to renouncing the ‘lure of the tragic,’ calling for a radical rethinking of the Void of ‘Chun’s (ir)reponsibility,’ long-overlooked by the static understanding and foregone analysis.