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The Political and Cultural Significance of Geoengineering in the Anthropocene in Snowpiercer and Interstella

  • 탈경계인문학Trans-Humanities
  • 2022, 15(1), pp.207-236
  • DOI : 10.22901/trans.2022.15.1.207
  • Publisher : Ewha Institute for the Humanities: EIH
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : March 14, 2022
  • Accepted : April 8, 2022
  • Published : April 30, 2022

song eun ju 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This thesis aims to analyze Snowpiercer and Interstella to explore what significance geoengineering has in terms of politics and culture. Geoengineering, in spite of its technological defectiveness and devastating potential side effects, is emerging as a feasible solution for climate change. However, Snowpiercer shows a skeptical attitude in a fiasco of CW-7, solar radiation management technique. Moreover, geoengineering reveals fundamental problems in its anthopocentricism that it still presumes humankind is the only actor to deal with crisis in the Anthropocene. On the contrary, Interstella adheres to the belief in an independent and autonomous human subject to overcome environmental disasters. It is based on the American Frontier spirit that exhaustion of resource and social conflicts can be alleviated by expanding territory. American expansionism is involved with consumer capitalism to consider nature as an available resource for human use. Therefore, despite a optimistic ending for human future in the movie, it lacks a reflection on anthropocentric and materialistic modern civilization. Snowpiercer focuses on imagining the world beyond the closed door of the train, where it is free from human control. Survivors should learn to coexist with other creatures in the frozen earth and interweave new geostory with them.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.