• 영어영문학
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• 제57권1호
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• pp.51-72
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• 2011

This paper explores the issue of strangers and of hospitality in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, based on Kant's concept of hospitality as "the right of a stranger" and on Derrida's discussion of hospitality. It first examines the similarities between the domestic relations within the Frankenstein family and Frankenstein's relation to the monster: an effort to create unity out of a multiplicity of elements, and what can be called a "debt economy." Then, reading the animation scene of the monster as a version of the advent of a stranger, it deals with the question of hospitality. More specifically, the arrival of Clerval immediately follows the animation of the monster because it effectively dramatizes the paradox that there is no hospitality without hostility. The opposition and the apposition between hospitality and hostility are also seen in the De Lacey family's welcoming Safie and rejecting the monster. Frankenstein's failure and the De Lacey family's failure to welcome the monster show that hospitality as "right" exemplified by Kantian hospitality does not apply to a stranger like the monster who has neither name nor relation and who is categorized into what Derrida terms "an absolute other." This paper also looks at Safie's problematic subversion against her father, which loses its subversive charge in the context of racial relations between Turkish Mahometans and European Christians. Safie's father looms large in the context of the issue of hospitality because his episode suggests that the category of race causes hospitality to malfunction.

• 영어영문학
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• 제64권2호
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• pp.203-217
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• 2018

Both in terms of frequency and importance, sympathy is one of the most central themes that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) delves into. While not a few critics have written on the subject, one crucially important aspect has been overlooked in the previous discussions of sympathy in Frankenstein: Shelley's critical intervention in the term's long lasting association with the notion of one body from a single origin. Focusing on the novel's central theme of sympathy, my paper addresses this oversight in the existing Frankenstein scholarship. I argue that Shelley's main agenda regarding sympathy in the novel is to problematize the logic of self-reproduction implicit in the notion of sympathy as an essentially familial tie. The reading of the novel as a warning against human violation of nature has been prevalent both in academia and popular culture. Nonetheless, in terms of sympathy, this paper offers an alternative reading in which the novel questions, not valorizes, the naturalization of nature. Far from valorizing the inviolable sacredness of nature, I argue, Frankenstein is a literary project attempting to disassociate sympathy from the natural bond that one is born into, and instead, re-associate it with fellowship as a second-nature to be continuously reinvented and reeducated.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제26권1호
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• pp.41-65
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• 2016

What prevails in the today's research on social media is a functional view of technology. Technology is regarded as a set of technical devices used to conduct specific social functions, such as personal communication, social networking, public posting, and corporate advertising, among others. This paper proposes that such a functional view of technology renders social media research unduly limited and constrained in its scope, level, and direction of inquiry. Problematizing on some representative social media research efforts in the field of IS, this paper provides an alternative perspective, that is, to view social media as a technology-for-being that exerts a deeper level of influence on our existence, molding and shaping the nature and mode of being itself. Such a technology-for-being perspective has been rarely explored or subscribed to in the present IS social media research. Building upon the new conception of social media as a technology-for-being, this essay explores the quality of being in the context of social media. Five such qualities are discussed, including virtuality, materiality, externality, liquidity, and hybridity. The essay also explores the deep structural problems of research to guide future social media research. Six of such problems include Problematize-the-Natural, Follow-the-Actor, Welcome-the-Frankenstein, Weber-meets-Frankenstein, Freud-meets-Frankenstein, and Marx-meets-Frankenstein. The essay concludes with discussions on the implications of the essay, its limitations, and suggestions for future work.

• 대중서사연구
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• 제24권3호
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• pp.233-257
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• 2018

본고의 목적은 <엑스 마키나>(2015)에서 프로메테우스 모티프 사용을 프로메테우스 신화, 프랑켄슈타인 모티프, 현대 SF영화의 층위에서 고찰함으로써 SF영화에서의 이 모티프의 변화 양상을 밝히는 데 있다. 첫째로, 프로메테우스 신화('살아있는 존재의 창조')의 층위에서 <엑스마키나>의 가장 큰 변화는 프로메테우스-에피메테우스-판도라-제우스의 인물 사각형이 네이든-칼렙-에이바의 삼각형으로 바뀌었다는 것인데, 이는 인간이 신을 밀어내고 창조주의 자리를 차지함으로써 과학기술의 발전이 불러올 문제를 풀고 해피엔드를 가져올 존재가 없어졌음을 의미한다. 둘째로, 프랑켄슈타인 모티프('금지된 지식에 대한 애호', '오만', '창조주에 대한 피조물의 증오')의 층위에서 이 영화는 칼렙이 소설 『프랑켄슈타인』의 로버트 월턴 선장처럼 창조주와 피조물의 이야기의 목격자로 남게 함으로써 프랑켄슈타인-괴물(네이든-에이바) 중심의 서사가 유지되도록 하지만 에이바의 '기계성'을 크게 부각시킴으로써 소설과 차별화한다. 셋째로, 현대 SF영화의 층위에서 다른 것들과는 달리 이 영화에서는 반란이 진압되지 않고 기계가 승리하여 그 능력이 인간의 그것을 넘어서는 것을 보여주는데, 이는 인간에게 귀속되지 않는 '새로운 종의 출현'을 제시하면서 인간과 기계의 새로운 관계 정립을 요구한다. <엑스 마키나>가 이처럼 다양한 층위에서 프로메테우스 모티프를 다루는 것은 하나의 모티프가 축적해온 다양한 내용을 활용하고 변형을 통해 새로운 요소를 추가함으로써 서사를 매우 풍부하게 한다는 의미를 갖는다. 본 연구의 의의는 그러한 다층적 모티프 사용과 그것을 통한 서사의 확장을 구체적인 사례를 통해 증명했다는 데 있다.

• 영어영문학
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• 제58권2호
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• pp.189-215
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• 2012

This paper reads Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) in light of the 18th-century understanding of 'sympathy' including those of Hume and Smith and also in light of what Michael Hardt in our century has called "affective labor." I argue that the imaginative capacity and "seeing" are crucial in understanding Smith's idea of 'sympathy.' By showing how the monster's ugliness precludes any human character from sympathizing with him, Mary Shelley exposes that Smith's idea of sympathy fails to maintain social harmony. Mary Shelley revises Smith's 'sympathy' and makes it more radical by suggesting that the active affective labor could bridge the epistemological distance lying between the agent concerned and the impartial spectator. I first read Smith's idea of sympathy as an imaginative capacity which is inevitably influenced by 'seeing' and visual perception. Then I analyze the scenes in which the creature in Frankenstein fails to acquire any human sympathy due to his ugliness, and show how the specular nature of 'sympathy' is disrupted when one party is visually ugly and deformed. I conclude that affective labor and active moral reflection on the part of the spectator need to be provided when the agent concerned is 'ugly' and thus challenges our habitual epistemological boundary. Shelley's re-evaluation of Smith's sympathy, thus, suggests that affective labor may not be something that women alone have to perform, but an ethical practice that concerns all human beings and that can transform the otherwise flawed human capacity for sympathy.

• 영어영문학
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• 제54권4호
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• pp.483-509
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• 2008

For the last decades, criticism on Frankenstein has tried to make a link between Victor's Creature and Rousseaurean "man in a state of nature." Like the Rousseaurean savage in a state of animal, the monster has only basic instincts least needed for his survival, i.e. self-preservation, but turns into a civilized man after learning language. Most critics argue that, despite the monster's acquisition of language, his failure in entry into a cultural and linguistic community is the outcome of a lack of sympathy for him by others, which displays the stark existence of epistemological barriers between them. That is to say, the monster imagines his being the same as others in the pre-linguistic stage but, in the linguistic stage, he realizes that he is different from others. Interpreting the Rousseaurean idea of language, which appears in his writings, as much more focused on emotion than many critics think, I read the dispute between Victor and his Creature as a variation of parent-offspring conflict. Shelley criticizes Rousseau's parental negligence in putting his children into a foundling hospital and leaving them dying there. The monster's revenge on uncaring Victor parallels the likely retaliation Rousseau's displaced children would perform against Rousseau, which Shelley imaginatively reproduces in her novel. The conflict between the monster and Victor is due to a disrupted attachment between parent and child in terms of Darwinian developmental psychology. Affective asynchrony between parent and child, which refers to a state of lack of mutual favorable feelings, accounts for numerous dysfunctional families. This paper shifts a focus from a semiotics-oriented perspective on the monster's social isolation to a Darwinian perspective, drawing attention to emotional problems transpiring in familial interactions. In doing so, it finds that language is a means of communicating one's internal emotions to others along with other means such as facial expressions and body movements. It also demonstrates that how to promote emotional well-being in either familial or social relationships entirely depends on the way in which one employs language that can entail either pleasure or anger on hearers' part.

• 영어영문학
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• 제58권2호
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• pp.305-325
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• 2012

It is by the mad scientists that the ontological and epistemological turn was made in that scientific era. They achieved a scientific revolution although they were regarded as eccentric, comic, unsound, and evil ones in the dark and dismal labs. Likewise, a scientist who would like to create an anomaly, something novel and abnormal, tended to be considered mad and treated as such either because of his scientific theory which differed from those of other scientists or because his obstinate methodology was often blamed for its immorality and profaneness. Despite the fanciful purpose and the anomalous way in which the mad scientists did their experiments, these were attempts to explore new scientific terrain and find something new or unexpected, which often raised controversies between the old paradigm and the new one. As Thomas Kuhn manifests, subsequently, "an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one" and then, "there must be a conflict between the paradigm that discloses anomaly and the one that later renders the anomaly lawlike." In that sense, Frankenstein's, Jekyll's, and Moreau's eerie challenges can be interpreted as efforts to achieve the ambitious goal of solving the scientific mysteries of the world in such unfavorable environmental conditions as specified in the three novels.

• 영미문화
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.251-285
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• 2014

Monsters cannot speak. They have been objectified and represented through a particular concept 'monstrosity' that renders the presence of monsters effectively simplified and nullified. In contemporary monster narratives, however, the site of monsters reveals that they could be the complex construction of society, culture, language and ideology. As going into the structure that concept is based on, therefore, meanings of monsters would be seen to be highly unstable. When symbolic language strives to match monsters with a unified concept, their meanings become only further deferred rather than valorized. This shows the language of monsters should disclose the self-contradiction inherent in 'monstrosity,' which has made others—namely beings we define as 'different' from ourselves in culture or physical appearance—embodied as abject and horrifying monsters. Unable to be understood, accepted, or called humans. I analyse Frankenstein and Dracula that firmly converge monstrous bodies into a symbolic meaning, demonstrating how this fusion causes problems in the multicultural society. I especially emphasize the undeniable affirmation of expurgated others we need to have empathetic relations with, because their difference, unfamiliarity, and slight divergences are likely to be defined as abnormalities. In the multicultural society, thus, we must learn to embrace diversity, while also having to recognize there are many others that have been thought of as monsters; ironically enabling us to think about an undeniable imperative of being responsive to other people. In this respect, the monstrous inhuman goes to the heart of the ethical undercurrent of multiculturalism, its resolute attempt to recognize and respect someone else's difference from me. A focus on empathetic relations with others, thus, can strengthen the process of creating social mechanisms that do justice to the competing claims of different cultural groups and individuals.

• 대중서사연구
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• 제26권1호
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• pp.243-277
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• 2020

본 논문은 브라이언 N. 두채니(Brian N. Duchaney)의 『공포의 불꽃: 테크놀로지, 사회, 호러영화 The Spark of Fear: Technology, Society and the Horror Film』(2015)를 중심으로 호러영화의 사회문화사를 테크놀로지라는 키워드로 고찰한다. 영화장르에서 테크놀로지와 가장 밀접한 관계를 갖고 있는 장르는 SF이다. 이에 반해 호러는 테크놀로지와 반대되는 자연/초자연으로 주로 설명되어 왔다. 이런 점에서 『공포의 불꽃』이 호러영화의 역사를 테크놀로지에 대한 (반)작용으로 설명하는 것은 주목할 만하다. 고딕 소설의 영향 하에서 제작된 초기 호러영화는 산업자본주의가 야기한 테크놀로지에 대한 두려움을 반영한다. 예를 들어 <프랑켄슈타인 Frankenstein>(1931)에서 성난 군중들은 테크놀로지의 산물인 괴물을 가혹하게 린치하는데, 이는 테크놀로지가 주는 이질감과 공포에서 비롯한 행동이다. 이 군중행동은 또한 대공황 시기 산업자본주의에 의해 소외된 대중의 봉기를 연상시킨다. 전후 호황기에 등장한 SF호러 영화들에서 외계인으로 상징되는 타자들은 전후 미국의 번영의 가치를 파괴하는 존재이다. 이 때 번영은 교외화에 따른 중산층의 삶과 관련되며, 그들은 TV, 냉장고 등 생활 테크놀로지에 둘러싸여 순응주의적 삶을 살아간다. 베트남전 시대에 호러영화는 고립과 폐쇄의 공간인 집을 무대로 반문화 세대인 아이들을 악마화한다. 여기에서 공포는 테크놀로지의 완전한 부재에서 발생한다. 1980년대 이후 비디오, 인터넷, 스마트폰 등의 미디어는 외부세계와의 연결을 강화했지만 우리가 통제하지 못하는 또 하나의 외부 영향력이 되었다. 9.11 이후 호러 영화에 만연하는 '파운드-풋티지'와 '고문 포르노'는 관음/감시와 노출/전시의 테크놀로지가 포화 상태에 이르렀음을 드러낸다. 이런 점에서 『공포의 불꽃』은 테크놀로지 진보에 대한 기대와 공포가 우리의 일상적 삶과 불가분의 관계가 되고 있는 오늘날 시의적절한 통찰을 제공한다.

• 문화기술의 융합
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.379-384
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• 2022

블록버스터 SF 영화 두 편이 동시에 등장한 2021년은 SF 장르가 열세였던 한국 영화사에 기념비적인 해이다. 넷들릭스에서 제작한 <승리호>와 티빙이 제작한 <서복>이 그 두 편이다. 공교롭게도 이 두 편은 로봇과 복제인간이라는 포스트-휴먼이 등장하는 SF물이다. SF의 시조인 소설 『프랑켄슈타인』에서 알 수 있듯 인간은 오래 동안 인간과 유사한 존재, 혹은 또 다른 인간인 포스트-휴먼에 대해 상상해 왔다. <승리호>는 우주 청소선과 우주 청소부라는 특이한 소재를 다루고 있으며, 인간과 매우 친숙한 로봇이 주요 캐릭터이다. 지구가 황폐화 되어 소수의 인류만이 인공위성으로 이주해 살아간다는 미래 사회를 배경으로 초거대 기업 설립자가 꾸민 음모를 승리호 선원들이 막는 이야기이다. 세련되고 정밀한 CG로 구현된 우주 공간 비주얼이 볼거리이다. <서복>은 시한부 인생을 사는 남성이 실험체로 만들어진 서복이라는 복제인간을 보호하며 동행하는 이야기이다. 두 인물의 실존적 고민을 통해 죽음과 영생이라는 철학적 주제를 다루고 있다. <승리호>는 한국적 신파 정서가 서사에 활용되었고, <서복>은 한국의 지리적공간을 배경으로 한 로드무비 성격을 띠고 있다.