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영어

This article tries to research on relation of the mutual productions with receptions of the representations of Kisaengs. The representations of kisaengs are not the one-sided representations produced, circulated, appropriated by intelligent writers but the aesthetic response which carried the trauma about modernity, especially capitalism by the more expanded subalterns including the group of kisaengs themselves. Kisaeng, the traditional artist group, had got to the altered identity under the rapidly changing conditions. In Choson dynasty, 'kisaeng' had signified not a occupation but a lowly position, therefore ruled not directly by money but by the power of nation or high class men. Unlike this premodern kisaeng's conditions, modern kisaeng existed as a physical merchandise through willing contract, providing pleasures and entertainment for any men who afforded. Their Self-denial, humiliation were formed within these social environments. It is a very crucial point that these emotions of kisaengs were able to be shared with lower class people intersecting the gender. In kisaeng-centered narrative, kisaengs are represented esthetically and ambivalently not only as the most mean monetary economy but also the subalterns sacrificed, defiled and somtimes kept silent. The empathy with kisaengs in the narratives was the phenomenon, found among lower class, women or any other groups hurt by rapid modernity or violent capitalism. In other hand, as the romantic love and sweet home had been asserted as the ideal of the modernity, the representations of kisaengs discarded by family, society, nation, had much analogy with the colonists who had no choice but to be anxious for modernity, despite of its all unattainableness. To put it other way, there were complexities in the representations of kisaengs embodied such as the jump, rupture of capitalism or the tragedy of modernity. This is why mass could lose their mind in kisaeng-centered narratives and these representations could be tools that readers and spectators including real group of kisaengs, exposed their subjectivity secretly.