KJC Korea
Journal Central

Since March 2020, many philosophers have written about the COVID-19 pandemic situation, including Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou. The two have very close political positions, but their reactions to the situation have been very different. While Žižek sees the coronavirus pandemic as an important trigger for fundamental political change, Badiou argues that the current situation will not cause a revolution or endanger capitalism. We believe that the two philosophers’ different understandings of the concept of the other led to this difference of positions. Both philosophers have within three kinds of concepts of the other: the immanent and relative other, the transcendent and absolute other, and the immanent and absolute other. The crucial difference between Žižek and Badiou lies in the relationship between the two absolute others. In the case of Žižek, the immanent and absolute other, the object a, is the effect of, and is a part of, the transcendental and absolute other, the big other. In other words, the immanent and absolute other has a direct relationship with the transcendent and absolute other. In the case of Badiou, on the other hand, there is no direct relationship between infinity and void. For Žižek, COVID-19 is a big other in society, and thus can be an opportunity to reshape society. For Badiou, the pandemic cannot have any effect on the political situation, because the infinity has no direct relationship with the void.

This paper explicates Stiegler's critical diagnoses of digital information technology and his solutions to it, and examines their significance. Algorithmic governance and total automation are based on the concept of computability and information as amount of data. They capture the attention to life, resulting in the impoverishment of intellectual capacity and knowledge. Therapeutic work is required to restore the ability of knowledge so that creative activities utilizing technological automatism can be carried out. According to Stiegler, technological objects as exteriorized exosomatic hyper- material memory are pharmakon(poison/remedy). In order to transform the potential of the digital associated milieux as a poison to that as a remedy, and to derive non- automated capabilities from automated technology, we need to rethink the relationship between technology and knowledge from the perspective of sharing and inheriting knowledge and caring for life, not from the perspective of profit-seeking calculations.

This study focuses on the allegory of Anima machine that U-Ram Choe known as a kinetic artist has been making since 2000. I take a closer look at the Posthuman symptoms of the Anima machine. The kinetic element of his works is intended to symbolize the emergence and the self-organizaation in the living system. His mechanical living beings have the value of beauty that anthropocentrism does not allow non-humans. These aspects provide an opportunity to contemplate the posthuman sensitivity against the aesthetic based the dichotomy between humans and non-humans in which Man defined. Thus this paper is intended to verify that Anima machines function as the allegory of symbioses between humans and non-humans that displaces anthropocentrism. Furthermore, this study will be meaningful in that it reveals the reason why Choe has been examining the symbiotic relationship between humans and non-humans in the course of techno-futurism of Korean society since the 1990s.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze Choi In-hoon’s “Literature and Ideology” and examine the imagination of Civilization Genetic Information (DNA)’ and the aspects of the evolutionary art theory that Choi In-hoon tried to structure and theorize. Choi In-hoon is actively using the theory of evolution to understand human beings and civilization. With the genetic Information (DNA)’ at the center, Choi In-hoon says that ‘civilization’ is another homeostasis, and the genetic information of civilization is the symbol of (DNA)’. In Hoon Choi's view, humans experience two evolutionary processes: the first is biological evolution, and the second is civilized evolution. Each evolution has DNA and (DNA)’, and humans and civilizations as individual beings evolve by repeating phylogeny. In the process, Inhoon Choi is attempting to establish a core of evolutionary art theory in “Literature and Ideology”. “Literature and Ideology” shows the origin of Choi In-hoon’s art theory at the core, and also suggests the possibilities and limitations of the biological understanding of Choi In-hoon’s literature. Through this study, I was able to reconsider the status of literature as convergence knowledge in the 21st century by understanding the interactions between literature, art, and biology.

As COVID-19 continues for a long time, a study has found that depression among young people in their 20s has reached a dangerous level. Although the Ministry of Education has announced a plan to support the mental health of college students in connection with the curriculum, the development of contents that can overcome COVID-19 and develop literacy skills for establishing new values is insignificant in the reality of universities. In this regard, it is very appropriate to develop and study subjects to provide standards for overcoming the corona pandemic situation and the direction for university students to move forward in the post-corona era. <Corona Humanities and Arts Therapy> is a combination of medical science and humanities that can be approached in an interdisciplinary way and has strategic conditions optimized for understanding this situation and finding alternatives. The purpose of this study is to apply it to classes as a design following the ‘realization of borderless education’ that emphasizes convergence and student experience.

This essay explores the melodramatic mode of Ian McEwan’s recent novel Machines Like Me in order to attest to the aptitude of the genre when reckoning with the increasing moral ambiguity involved in human-AI relations. While tracing the entanglements of Charlie, Miranda, and Adam, this essay contends that eeriness is one of the prominent affects that the protagonist experiences. Eeriness signifies the underlying anxiety of a human subject in the face of the (imminent) arrival of far-advanced artificial nonhumans. The recurring motif of adopting a child, and the ensuing feel of abortiveness in the novel merits critical attention, mainly because they illustrate the fragility of the pseudo family unit forged across the categorical species divide and blood ties. Equally importantly, the kind of justice suspended, thwarted, and served by the end of Machines Like Me emblematizes the intricately complex condition in which moral agents—human and artificial—exercise their right for judgment and collide with one another. Notable is McEwan’s success in framing the daunting task of establishing roboethics within the structure of melodrama. In doing so, McEwan, on the one hand, demonstrates formalistic affinities between speculative fiction and melodrama when creating the speculative reality. On the other, he reckons with the unknowable in human’s ethical coexistence with artificial intelligence.