신자유주의 시대의 공포의 정동 : 강영숙･편혜영･하성란의 2000년대 소설을 중심으로

Abstract

Today, we live in a society where uncertainty and instability are getting serious every day. With the trend of global recession, crisis and insecurity have become universal in daily life, and disasters caused by the climate crisis imply an ‘unpredictable future’ or ‘no future’. In the current situation where people don’t know and cannot control their cognition and consciousness on something by themselves, it is crucial to understand how people are being ‘affected’, rather than how they ‘think’ per se. At this point, this paper assumes that ‘Fear’, one of the negative feelings, may form the affective atmosphere nowadays. The affect of fear arose in the Korean society in the 2000s when the neoliberal shift began after the IMF economic crisis during 1997-1998. Carrying out a large-scale restructuring, unemployment and suicide rates have risen, and people have come to realize the misery of everyday life, which could turn into a disaster at any moment. This paper focuses on the fact that in the 2000s, many novels representing horror, including grotesque, uncanny, and disaster narratives, appeared in the field of Korean literature at this time. The fear is an unconsciously affected fear that is constantly being generated, moving around, being a part of the body on the surface but quickly volatilizing and sticking to here and there. Therefore, this paper aims to trace the affect of fear that appeared in Korean novels in the 2000s, determine how the texts derived the fear in which political and social context of the time, and explore the affective performativity that are resonating with today. This paper focuses on the works of Kang Young-sook, Pyun Hye-young, Ha Seoung-ran.