The Space of Hope: the Individual′s Ethical Practice and Community

희망의 공간을 향하여: 개인의 윤리적 실천과 공동체

My purpose in this paper is to construct what I call "the space of hope" for the individual′s unfettered interpretation of the world and examine its ethical and political potential. 1 discuss the network of context to define the nature and scope of the space and also suggest that the individual′s interpretation of the world should be deemed a form of ethical practice or commitment. 1 would like to add that the term context, which refers, among other things, to the organic and dynamic relationship between individual and community, is meant to be strategic: it presupposes productive malleability, even slipperiness, in order to destabilize the institutional or ideological hierarchy between center and margin and enhance the individual′s self-conscious negotiation with his or her own community. It is my contention that every act of interpretation is always under some kind of contextual pressure and that the individual is able, in turn, to define and construct the context. This interaction represents a way to guard against the inimical force of totalization in the realms of theory and practice and can be summed up, that is, tentatively and strategically, in the idea of positionality.