여성 SF 소설의 테크노피아와 소수자 문학

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the gender-innovative female subject represented in the SF literature by Korean women and impart the meaning to the way they re-signify and reconstruct themselves as minorities. In this research, an ethical community of the advanced technological era is called ‘Technopia’. Assuming posthumanism essentially calls for introspection on postmodernism and reflection on humanism, it may be said that feminist SF literature is the thing to actively conceive the alternative future for the ethical practice of posthumanism through the representation of Technopia. Posthumanism of the feminist SF literature is embodied by ‘talking’ to minorities. Rather than objectifying minorities, their lives are represented by true ‘talking’ where they are recognized as the subject and their specific histories and situations are understood. So to speak, in the recent feminist SF literature, the subject of ‘cyborg-becoming’ attempts new reflection on what life is. It allows minorities culturally otherized to construct their place and makes their lives a narrative so shows the relationship, communication and solidarity with minorities. It calls anthropocentricism into question and imagines not humans as a single specified being but humans as the world where different identities are embodied. Firstly, in the feminist SF literature, the female cyborg subject transcending a female biological body can escape from the alienation as the other and the object by breaking away from the common concept of a ‘woman’. In addition, as a postbody, it achieves a dream of life prolongation with the functional improvement to go beyond the human biological limits. However, Technopia in the feminist SF literature is warning that a female body is still forced to remain a serious social issue through the structural alienation unless changes in the relations with others and machines are presupposed. Finally, in the feminist SF literature, high technology is transforming and adapting an organic body technically and it results in reconstruction of gender. In the recent feminist SF works, female cyborg subject is both fictional product and social reality that is crossing the boundaries and divisions between human and robot, male and female, and heterosexual and homosexual and making the dichotomous gender system imploded. Writing by female SF writers is the responsibility for a community and practical engagement. A new way of ethical reflection and conception of the alternative future attempted by their Technopia faithfully follows the literary calling to present a direction of life to readers in a modern society.