감시 사회와 인간의 소외: 캐씨 박 홍의 「클라우드 세계」를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper explores the aspects of future surveillance society and human isolation in it by analyzing poems of “The World Cloud,” the third part of Cathy Park Hong’s Engine Empire. Hong presents a future world in which human beings feel lonely and isolated under the constant surveillance of a digital monitoring device called “smart snow.” Deprived of privacy and autonomy, they are downgraded to loyal consumers supporting surveillance capitalism which controls and automates them through collected data and invisible algorithm. As the former data scanner couple shows in “a Visitation” and “Who’s Who,” even though human beings escape into virtual reality to find a refuge from their unsatisfactory life, they are increasingly isolated and marginalized in the real world. In “Get Away from It All,” the poet suggests a possibility of overcoming human isolation in this dystopian surveillance society by showing amorous “rebels” who “undrape” themselves, that is, disconnect themselves from digital gadgets and plunge into the real world. By examining poems of “The World Cloud,” this paper confirms that Hong attempts to explore a unique poetic realm of her own rather than being stereotyped as a minority poet pursuing the theme of ethnicity.