『뒤돌아보며, 2000-1887년』: 벨러미의 유토피아와 개인의 소멸
Looking Backward, 2000-1887: The Demise of the Individual in Bellamy’s Utopia
0
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000-1887 inspired many postbellum readers to become actively involved in various reform movements. However, the work itself ironically vindicates the individual’s passive role in its utopian vision. Bellamy‘s utopia rejects individualism as the cause of inefficiency and immorality and is structured as a highly efficient and orderly state-machine. The organizational models of the utopia—i.e., the large corporation and the army in the Gilded Age—turn each individual into a mere mechanical part of the system. On the surface, the novel presents a splendid utopia that efficiently produces and distributes national wealth, guaranteeing economic equality. Underneath the surface, however, it suggests that postbellum Americans should not behave as independent individuals but instead conform to the demands of tyrannical large corporations and the competitive market, arguing that the ruthless capitalist pursuits of efficiency will eventually enable the hierarchical capitalist society to evolve into the utopian national system of economic democracy. By representing a utopia that rejects liberal individualism and democracy for the sake of efficiency and evolution, Bellamy provides escapist fantasies for the middle class in the Gilded Age, whose individualism was shattered in the face of severe class warfare and capitalist injustice. They suffered from fear, guilt, shame, and even nervous disorders, overwhelmed by the oppressive power of large capital and fearing the influx of immigrant laborers. By condoning their inaction and powerlessness, this utopian novel ironically provided postbellum middle-class Americans with opportunities to restore their broken individualism. Consequently, it mobilized popular support for reform movements in the name of the rising national community of the United States.
Abstract
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000-1887 inspired many postbellum readers to become actively involved in various reform movements. However, the work itself ironically vindicates the individual’s passive role in its utopian vision. Bellamy‘s utopia rejects individualism as the cause of inefficiency and immorality and is structured as a highly efficient and orderly state-machine. The organizational models of the utopia—i.e., the large corporation and the army in the Gilded Age—turn each individual into a mere mechanical part of the system. On the surface, the novel presents a splendid utopia that efficiently produces and distributes national wealth, guaranteeing economic equality. Underneath the surface, however, it suggests that postbellum Americans should not behave as independent individuals but instead conform to the demands of tyrannical large corporations and the competitive market, arguing that the ruthless capitalist pursuits of efficiency will eventually enable the hierarchical capitalist society to evolve into the utopian national system of economic democracy. By representing a utopia that rejects liberal individualism and democracy for the sake of efficiency and evolution, Bellamy provides escapist fantasies for the middle class in the Gilded Age, whose individualism was shattered in the face of severe class warfare and capitalist injustice. They suffered from fear, guilt, shame, and even nervous disorders, overwhelmed by the oppressive power of large capital and fearing the influx of immigrant laborers. By condoning their inaction and powerlessness, this utopian novel ironically provided postbellum middle-class Americans with opportunities to restore their broken individualism. Consequently, it mobilized popular support for reform movements in the name of the rising national community of the United States.
참고문헌 (26)
- Auerbach, Jonathan, "‘The Nation Organized’ : Utopian Impotence in Edward Bellamy’s Looking. Backward", American Literary History, 6(1), pp.24~47 (1994)
- Balthrope, Robin, "Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000-1887, Globalism, and Race", Contemporary Justice Review, 9(3), pp.303~315 (2006)
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo, "Emerson : Essays & Poems" (1996), Library of America
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo, "Nature", pp.5~49, Emerson
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo, "Self-Reliance", pp.259~282, Emerson
- Ferns, Chris, "Narrating Utopia : Ideology, Gender, Form in Utopian Literature" (1999), Liverpool UP
- Haber, Samuel, "The Nightmare and the Dream : Edward Bellamy and the Travails of Socialist Thought", Journal of American Studies, 36(3), pp.417~440 (2002)
- Halewood, W. H., "Catching up with Edward Bellamy", University of Toronto Quarterly, 63(3), pp.451~461 (1994)
- Hartman, Matthew, "Utopian Evolution : The Sentimental Critique of Social Darwinism in Bellamy and Peirce", Utopian Studies, 10(1), pp.26~41 (1999)
- Jung, Yeonsik, "‘Forgetting’ Race in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000-1887", ANQ, 29(3), pp.145~148 (2016)
- Jung, Yeonsik, "Hygiene and Mental Health in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000-1887", The Explicator, 73(2), pp.77~81 (2015)
- Kim, EunHyoung, "A Study on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Looking Backward: 2000-1887: Limitations of the Utopian Communities and Narrative Achievements", MA, pp.2001
- McClay, W. M., "The American Scholar", pp.264~271 (2001)
- Mullin, John R., "Edward Bellamy’s Ambivalence: Can Utopia be Urban?", Utopian Studies, 11(1), pp.51~65 (2000)
- Patai, Daphne, "Looking Backward 1988-1888: Essays on Edward Bellamy" (1988), U of Massachusetts P
- Pfaelzer, Jean, "Immanence, Indeterminance, and the Utopian Pun in Looking Backward", pp.51~67
- Pfaelzer, Jean, "The Utopian Novel in America 1886-1896 : The Politics of Form" (1984), U of Pittsburgh P
- Roemer, Kenneth M., "Utopian Audiences : How Readers Locate Nowhere" (2003), U of Massachusetts P
- Robertson, Michael, "The Last Utopians: Four Late Nineteenth-Century Visionaries and Their Legacy", pp.37~77 (2018), Princeton UP
- Segal, Howard P., "Bellamy and Technology: Reconciling Centralization and Decentralization", pp.91~105
- Strauss, Sylvia, "Gender, Class and Race in Utopia", pp.68~90
- Thoreau, Henry David, "Civil Disobedience" (2017), Enhanced Media
- Wagar, W. Warren, "Dreams of Reason: Bellamy, Wells, and the Positive Utopia", pp.106~125
- Wegner, Phillip, "Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity", pp.62~98 (2002), U of California P
- Wilson, R. Jackson, "Experience and Utopia : The Making of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward", Journal of American Studies, 11(1), pp.45~60 (1977)
- Winthrop, John, "The Puritans in America: A Narrative Anthology", pp.81~92 (1985), Harvard UP