중국 상상계의 역사 연구를 위한 서설

Abstract

This paper intends to examine the premises and conditions, conceptional apparatus, and ways of thinking and discussion to be adjusted, which are needed in order for the idea of the Imaginary in China to be established. Only after this examination is done, a concrete, overall, and systematic investigation of the symbols of the Imaginary in China is possible in its full sense. Because the concept and the theory of the Imaginary were made through the Western historical experience and by a Westerner, we can not but pass through a course of criticism on them in order to apply them to China. In this context, this paper, conducting a critical investigation of Xiaomei Chen"s Occidentalism, has explored the problems of Orientalism and Occidentalism which emerge when C. G. lung"s conception of archetype is applied to China. Through this exploration, this paper has pointed out that lung"s conception of archetype involves the problem of particularity and universality. In order to solve this problem, this paper turned to Lucian Boia"s Pour une Histoire de L"Imaginaire, and took the idea of dimensional difference between the particularity of symbol and the universality of archetype as its premise. Looking into the symbols of the Imaginary in China based on this premise, this paper has discovered that the eight archetypal structures (consciousness of the transcendental reality; the other self, death, the life after death; l"image de l"autre; unity; bringing the origin to the present; deciphering the future; escape; conflict between opponents) are all found in the Imaginary of China, and that in many cases, the symbols under each category have their own particularity which is radically distinct from the Western symbols. And through this work, three important issues arose as follows. First, within the Imaginary of China, the prevalent symbols are Shamanic. Second, the Imaginary of China should be investigated from the more comprehensive perspective of the Imaginary of East Asia rather than from its own closed perspective. Third, as many elements of the Imaginary of China and of East Asia are getting reactivated at the present time, we should approach the problems from the perspective of the present.