퀑탱 메이야수의 “과학 밖 소설” 비판: 필립 K 딕의 『유빅』을 중심으로

Abstract

This paper critically examines Quentin Meillassoux’s extro-science fiction, exploring his theorizations on the narrative of necessity and contingency depicted in Philip K. Dick’s novel, Ubik. As a speculative materialist challenging anthropomorphism, Meillassoux interrogates Kantian correlationism, contesting the idea that humans cannot cognize the “thing-in-itself.” However, his emphasis on the “Great Outsides” of our cognition risks perpetuating Descartes’s binary opposition and Platonic idealism, absolutizing the real as external to human cognition. In alignment with his speculative materialism, Meillassoux distinguishes between science fiction and “extro-science fiction” based on their relationships to experimental science. “Extro-science fiction” explores worlds outside scientific understanding, depicting contingencies without imposing necessary laws or causal explanations on uncertain or unrecognizable realities. Despite the classification, Meillassoux’s framework of inside and outside science falls short in capturing the speculative dimensions of science and the potentials of science fiction evident in Ubik. The novel, which portrays the destruction of reality across three intertwined worlds—the real world, the half-world, and the virtual world—reveals the inconsistencies of events and the breakdown of realities that elude complete comprehension and control. Rather than presenting absolute contingencies divorced from experimental science, Ubik unfolds a narrative of inconsistencies and the collapses of realities within these three worlds. Additionally, the novel intentionally exposes the ubiquity of products and advertising, highlighting the fearful reality of a capitalist system that is beyond anyone’s comprehension and control. This portrayal presents a challenge to Meillassoux’s speculation about the limits of science fiction, as exemplified in Ubik.