이 연구는 전 세계를 대상으로 유통되고 있는 글로벌 대중문화 생산물, 그 가운데서도 특히 글로벌 팝 또는 초국적 대중음악을 한국의 대중음악 생산자와 젊은 음악수용자들이 어떻게 소비하고 변용하는가에 주목하고 이를 혼성성 개념을 중심으로 한 탈식 민주의적 정체성 논의와 관련해 접근한다. 더 나아가 글로벌 자본주의의 상호 모순되는 전 지구성과 지역성이라는 두 가지 권력작용이 한국이라는 지역 내에서 어떻게 나타나는지, 그리고 문화의 국제적 흐름에 반응하며 생산된 대중문화물에 한국성 혹 은 한국적 문화정체성 개념이 어떠한 모습으로 변화되어 나타나는지에 주목한다. 이러한 초국적 문화의 수용과 혼성적 문화실천에 대한 분석 및 그 정치적 의미를 파악하기 위해서 이 논놈문은 글로벌자본의 영향력이나 로컬의 자율적 문화 실천의 입장만 각각 강조하는 단순한 흑백논리에서 탈피하여, 한국사회의 제반 권력관계의 구체적 맥락 내에서 이를 이해하려는 노력이 필요함을 강조한다. 이를 통해 성, 세대, 취향 등 탈민족적 정체성 변수들이 피억압적 위치에 놓인 다양한 집단의 입장과 접목함으로써 한국 내 기존의 권력지형을 변화시킬 수 있는 가능성을 제시하고 탈식민주의 논의의 비판적 지평을 확대하는 데 기여하고자 한다.
This article aims to explore theoretical debates about cultural appropriation, hybridity and postcolonial identity and to offer a case study analysing the processes through which national cultural identity is formed and transformed in the realm of Korean popular music. In this article, I examine the localization of global culture, in other words, the emergence of a shared transnational cultural imagery among Koreans, and highlight how the multiplicity and hybridity of cultural identities and Koreanness are constructed, in relation to the processes of appropriating transnational popular music. Within the sphere of what I call a 'global or postcolonial' perspective, I focus on the realm of popular music in Korea, in particular on synthetic(or hybrid) and transnational music making practices of popular musicians, as well as local consumption of imported, mainly Western, popular music among the younger generation of music enthusiasts. Using interview-based research of the Korean musicians, I demonstrate how contemporary Korean musics, which are almost indistinguishable from so-called 'transnational pop music', can be grounded for competing narratives of cultural identities and of the shifting notions of 'Koreanness'. In effect, this musical hybridity mirrors the reality of Korea today, in which the traditional sense of nationhood and identification is challenged. The Korean people now more openly embrace new musical styles from abroad as if they were their own. What results from their vigorous exposure to international styles is a use of various styles by local musicians and audiences who then create different forms and modes of identification. Within the Korean context, pluralized and hybrid identities have been formed at the interface of the global and local, marking the decline of naive notions of an essential cultural identity within bounded realms - such as family, community, nation and race - as well as marking the beginning of new identity politics, that has to work through ambivalence and multiple inflections. This new notion of 'multi-faceted Korean identities', needs to be evaluated carefully alongside empirically situated accounts of vernacular culture, and the article aims to achieve this. On this point, my own work 'may be' subject to critique, in as much as it may have overly favoured this anti-essentialist perspective. In other words, my research on the increasing heterogeneity of Korean popular music as a globalized local site(where concerns on the practices of consumption, life styles, identities and, more importantly, the lived effects of culture and its changing role have risen especially among the younger generation of consumers since the 1990s), might be criticized for the romantic celebration of all such culture as 'resistance'. However, this criticism fails to understand how class is lived through race, ethnicity, generation, sexual orientation, and gender, by denying the autonomy and political significance of these social forces and movements in contemporary society. It is also simple to define various cultural sites as either commodified or liberating. To do so is to ignore the complicated question of contextuality. Overall, any transnational contact with the other must be seen as being mediated internally within a culturally/socially specific context. The Korean experience of transnational sounds and cultural imagery clearly demonstrates that the basic dualism between a simplistic cultural universalism/particularism and East/West needs to be challenged. From this viewpoint, in drawing on the critical consciousness which includes postcolonial perspective, I'd like to discuss how 'critical postcolonialism' can function as a possible cultural strategy for dismantling essentialism, and for dismantling the dominant institutional structures and cultures within the Korean context.
한국어 초록 1. 들어가면서 2. 글로벌 대중문화물의 로컬 수용과 혼성성에 관한 이론적 논의 : 전 지구화와 탈식민주의 패러다임 3. 글로벌 사운드의 한국적 변용과 초국적 대중음악 소비 맥락에서의 정체성의 정치학 4. 결론 : 국제주의적 지역주의 혹은 비판적 탈식민주의 정체성의 형성? 참고문헌 영어 초록