유희로서의 글쓰기—J.M. 쿳시의 『서머타임』에 나타난 ‘장치’로서의 주인공 존 읽기

This paper examines J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime from the perspective of autobiography. The text demonstrates the issues Coetzee confronts while novels are being written and represents a partial history of South Africa. Vincent, who is engaged in writing John’s biography, faces the same challenges as not only an autobiographical writer but also a novelist. Although Vincent tries to construct John’s true self, his figure is fragmented, scattered, delayed and “deferred” in terms of Jacques Derrida’s definition of “différance”. To compromise the situation, an author intervenes in the context; however, the author cannot represent his characters as they are, and thus writing becomes a place in which a textual game is played out. Despite this situation, when it comes to Vincent’s role as a biographer, readers are able to follow the history of John as well as the interviewees and can find the ‘trace’ that they carry with the context. This trace shows the figure of John as a ‘device’, in relation to Viktor Shklovsky’s term, used to combine all the fragments (interviewees’ history), who suffer isolation and discrimination under apartheid. Furthermore, this device, in relation to the concept of Gilles Deleuze’s ‘fragment’ and ‘transversality’, is extended to represent the painful history of all South Africans and the country itself.