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Exposed Bodies and Dissoving Egos: Post-human Subjectivity in Kim Bo-yong and Kim Cho-yeop’s Sci-fi’s

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2024, 30(2), pp.301-333
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2024.30.2.009
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : April 23, 2024
  • Accepted : June 18, 2024
  • Published : June 30, 2024

Yi SohYon 1

1서강대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

SF, which has expanded its scope since the 2000s, foretells a new civilization that humanity will create in response to the Anthropocene crisis. This study examines how science fiction in Korea is recreating the impending Anthropocene disaster, focusing on the novels of Kim Cho-yeop and Kim Bo-young. These writers commonly suggest a solution that humanity must change itself above all in order for humanity to overcome the crisis and survive.It is necessary to fundamentally reflect on the modern view of humanity and transform into a posthuman. Kim Cho-yeop's Dispatchers depicts a world contaminated by 'bumramchae', creatures from outer space. People try to reject and avoid bumramchae, but the protagonist rather tries to find a way to coexist with bumramchae. Through this process, the writer presents a new human figure that goes beyond the modern view of humanity that has established itself as an independent entity. These posthumans are shown connecting with a variety of other beings and joining the flow of creation. Kim Bo-young shows how robots and humans choose to coexist and co-evolve despite the situation of damaging each other in The Story of The Origin of Species. Likewise, in the short story "Old Convention", Kim Cho-yeop asks to practice the ethics and politics of ‘staying in extinction’ and ‘exposure’ by escaping anthropocentrism through the process of seeking coexistence with extraterrestrial life. Neo-materialist feminist researcher Stacey Alaimo encourages us to actively expose ourselves to harmful disasters that pollute our bodies and minds. Life experiences the extinction and damage of the modern ego by exposing itself, but through this, it enters an ontological state of tangling connected to the wider world. This state involves the experience of breaking away from the atomized self and merging into the flow of generation, thus creating pleasure. Based on these reasons, this study proposes the politics of 'exposure' and symbiosis, which went further from 'patience' in the passive and ascetic sense, as an alternative to the Anthropocene.

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