T.S.엘리엇의 『황무지』에 나타난 섞음의 미학과 정치학 - 세계시민주의시대의 잡종의 문화윤리학

Abstract

In 1922, T. S. Eliot, English poet and critic, published The Waste Land, arguably the most influential modernist poem in the twentieth century. This widely known poem represents the social disorder and moral helplessness right after the First World War in Europe. Eliot wrote this poem employing new poetic form and technique radically different from the previous poetic conventions so that common readers could attain the real sense of hopeless moral situation of the early twentieth-century. In this poem, Eliot adopts the poetics of fusion as strategy along with the pastiche, the fragmented quotations, and juxtaposition of different periods and traditions. The aim of this paper, however, is not to discuss this formal aspect of The Waste Land, but the thematic or ethical aspect of the poem. In rereading The Waste Land, one can argue that the real purpose of the poem is to establish the cultural ethics for the rest of the twentieth century in the desolate and despicable situation of world culture. It seems that T. S. Eliot, as an astute public intellectual, had already anticipated the coming of globalization and multiculturalism in the latter part of the twentieth century. Globalization is roughly defined as the process by which the world is becoming more interconnected and hybridized; it is a process in which interaction of cultural representation becomes increasingly widespread and homogeneous. This global cultural process has brought about the so-called cosmopolitanism. In this context, hybridity creates new transcultural forms in the global perspective. What is the ethical implications of hybridity in cosmopolitanism? The thematic message of the poem for the different ages is as follows: "Give, sympathize, and control yourself!" This should be a real ethical motto for the international readers in The Waste Land in the Age of Cosmopolitanism.