외주화된 기억이라는 디스토피아: <블랙미러>의 기계지향존재론적 독해

Abstract

This article examines the phenomenon of “outsourced memory” as a key dimension of the human-technology relationship, focusing on a series of Netflix anthology Black Mirror episodes that feature digital memory devices such as “Cookie,” “Grain,” and the griefbot. Regarding these devices as autonomous “machines,” this article investigates how they technically transform human memory and subjectivity drawing on Levi Bryant’s Machine-Oriented Ontology. This allows for an ontology in which memory devices and humans, nonhuman objects and subjects interact to form an assemblage of memory as co-constitutive actants. To this end, this article analyzes the ontological status of analog memory devices and the structure of subjective fragmentation in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape drawing on Deleuze’s conceptualization of “virtual object,” and then traces how digital memory technologies enable new forms of agency and the dispersion of subjectivity by reading digital memory devices in Black Mirror against Bryant’s conceptualization of “virtual proper being.” Ultimately, this paper presents a genealogical account of the technical mediation of memory and the ontological co-constitution of subjects and machines, revealing the ethical, affective, and existential implications of outsourcing memory to nonhuman actants.