역사 없는 시대의 대체역사: 한국 웹소설 ‘대체역사물’에 나타난 자본주의 리얼리즘

Abstract

This study examines the sociocultural meanings represented by alternate history narratives in the platform storytelling market. Alternate history, a subgenre of science fiction, is a fictional form that imagines a history that unfolded in a different direction from the ‘real history’. Alternate histories have received scholarly and critical attention for their speculative power to imagine alternative worlds. However, in recent years, alternative histories published on the platforms have been perceived as writing characterized by “history as play” and “loss of historicity” instead of exploring alternative futures. This article describes recent alternate histories as ‘alternate histories in a time without history’. It then explains alternate histories as a specific case of ‘capitalist realism’ that has emerged after Francis Fukuyama's ‘end of history’, an art form that expresses the symptoms of the current era in which it is difficult to imagine alternative worlds and futures. By analyzing the formal and narrative characteristics of recent alternate histories produced on the platforms, this article argues that the genre typically features protagonists who simultaneously seek individual happiness and community prosperity. Furthermore, it shows that these stories present new historical subjects and positive models of life. The study found that contemporary web novel readers sympathize with economically and emotionally autonomous subjects, but on the other hand, they also want to fulfill their need for social recognition. It emphasized that this contradiction is at the heart of the contradictory desires of modern capitalist society, and found that alternate histories develop narratives that resolve these contradictions in fantastic ways.