조안 디디언의 『민주주의』에 나타난 통치 기계(오이코노미아)와 스펙타클 연구

초록

This essay aims to examine obscure meaning of democracy in Democracy, written by Joan Didion, a contemporary American novelist. As a theoretical scaffolding, the essay mainly utilizes Giorgio Agamben’s archeological investigation into ‘oikonomia,’ the origin of the contemporary word ‘economy,’ and glory constituting modern society of spectacle, in his The Kingdom and the Glory. Agamben, tracing down a spectrum of meanings of oikonomia, which has meant administration of house in Aristotle’s Politics, mysterious providence of God, Trinity, machine of governance in monarchy and democracy, etc. Agamben also unfolds how sovereignty in democracy is replaced by governance or administration via the genealogical investigation. Didion’s Democracy is a political fiction in which Joan Didion, the narrator, describes her investigation into Inez Victor’s life as a wife of a politician and Christians’ brutal family history. Inez’s senator husband, Harry Victor, represents corrupt American politics of modern democracy dominated by oikonomia, the emptiness of administrative machine, on which spectacle as glory hovers over. Also the novel takes on international politics where Jack, a CIA agent, works surreptitiously to manipulate the Vietnam war whose national tragedy corresponds with family tragedy of Paul Christian’s murder of her daughter, Janet. Inez’s final resolution to exile from oikonomia and Victor’s power sheds light on the potentiality of freedom from the rule of oikonomia and spectacle in modern politics.

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