역사적 폭력의 트라우마와 포스트메모리의 가족서사 －최은영의 『밝은 밤』과 장웨란의 『고치』 비교연구－

초록

This article compares Choi Eun-young’s “Bright Night” and Zhang Yueran’s “The Cocoon” in order to examine how historical violence is transmitted to the next generation through particular forms of memory and affective orders within the family. Although the two works are set against different histories of violence, both show that such violence does not simply end as a matter of the past. Rather, it remains embedded in familial relationships and the structures of everyday life, deeply shaping the self-understanding and worldview of later generations. In particular, this study focuses on the family narrative as a major narrative space in which memories of historical violence are stored and transmitted. It argues that the inheritance of memory is not a simple transfer of information, but a process mediated by silence, evasion, affect, and narrative reconstruction. In “Bright Night”, the traumatic experiences of the older generation are summoned into the present through such media of memory as oral testimony, letters, and photographs. Through the processes of listening, reading aloud, and responding, Jiyeon comes to receive the wounds of the previous generation within her own present. Here, postmemory is organized affectively through the articulation and sharing of memory, and it opens up the possibility of relational recovery. In this process, an ethics of care and solidarity among women is restored. By contrast, in “The Cocoon”, the scars of the Cultural Revolution remain within the family in the form of concealment, silence, and fragmentary clues, and the younger generation comes to know the truth of the past through interrogation and investigation. Unresolved violence seeps into the inner lives and relationships of later generations through these fragmented mediations, generating affects such as anxiety and violent impulse. In this sense, postmemory in “The Cocoon” appears as an ongoing and incomplete process of reception. Thus, while both works demonstrate narrative aspects of postmemory in that later generations inherit a past they did not directly experience, they differ in the way memory operates and in the direction of affect. Whereas “Bright Night” seeks the possibility of relational recovery through oral narration, response, care, and mourning, “The Cocoon” sharply reveals how traces of the past continue into the present through silence, suspicion, and anxiety. Through a comparison of these two works, this study shows how memories of historical violence are reconfigured through family narrative in Korean and Chinese literary contexts. It also confirms that the concept of postmemory can be extended beyond Holocaust discourse in the West and applied to the historical experiences of Korea and China. Furthermore, the comparison reveals that the transmission of historical trauma depends not only on the nature of the past event itself, but also on how it is spoken, silenced, recorded, and pursued within the family.

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