초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Virginia Woolf's ambivalence towards women's entry into the world of professions is well known; she celebrated it as an instrument for woman's emancipation, and yet she was worried that it might lead to woman's complicity with the evils of the social system, the system that had perpetuated inequality, injustice, and violence throughout history. Some critics value Woolf's feminist project while others criticize her class allegiances; all of these critics tend to equate rather simplistically Woolf's view of profession with that of masculinity, oppression, or capitalism. The purpose of this paper is to show that Woolf's concern with profession encompasses a much broader question of constructing a freer self and community. Examining Woolf's view of profession side by side with a lecture entitled "Science as a Vocation" by German sociologist Max Weber, this paper argues that both Woolf and Weber invite us to rethink the function and meaning of a 'profession' in a highly professionalized society. Weber tells us how to fulfill the inner vocation of science in the age of rationalization, intellectualization, and disenchantment where science has been deprived of its authority as a universal truth about a human being and the world. Likewise, Woolf urges us to use the profession as a way of achieving a freedom from "unreal loyalties," a freedom which is a basis for a freer and more peaceful community, while remaining acutely aware of the various obstacles that professional women confront in the capitalist, patriarchal, and professional world. For both Woolf and Weber, the true vocation of professional writers and scholars in this modern world is to restore the mysteries, the obscure, the forgotten realm of life by means of working only for the sake of work. Weber and Woolf also demonstrate how the professional commitment to work can be compatible with the dialogues and collaboration between teachers and students, writers and readers. The autonomy of art and science in Weber and Woolf, therefore, does not so much reflect or aggravate the division between the individual and society as it does lead to taking a transformative participation in society. In these ways, Weber and Woolf show us how it is possible for a modernist to pursue a vocation in a world where the divine meaning of a vocation has almost lost its ground.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
Virginia Woolf, Max Weber, professionalization, profession, science as a vocation, writing as a vocation, modernism
