여성 SF 문학에 나타난 장애와 포스트휴머니즘의 불구성(不具性)

Abstract

The female and the disabled constitute their identities by being excluded. In our society, exclusionary discourse produce plenty of severe social division, discrimination against and hatred towards minorities. In particular, bodies of women and persons with disabilities, which are stigmatized as the incapable and inadequate beings, are subject to hostility and contempt. However, recently feminist literature is presenting the possibilities of understanding of and communication with minorities as kind of feminist thinking. Raising an issue against the speculative thinking centered on the non-disabled, it ponders upon the possibilities of solidarity between feminism for the non-disabled and the disabled. Regarding ‘a body deprived’, philosophy of feminism and the politics of disability meet with each other. Hence, it is possible to identify the possibilities of thinking about the disabled and feminism by examining the perceptions of the disabled and disabilities in female SFs, considering the way the bodies of the disabled are represented. In recent female SFs, representation of disabilities is differentiated from a conventional guideline where they have been learned as an object of care, protection and consideration in our society. The disabled, who still exist even in the background of the technological and scientific era, are not the beings of inability and deficiency. That is, they are not the beings of ‘certain state’ but ‘human’beings of the universal concept referring to all living things, or ‘Zoé’. Such a shift of perception gives us significant values in our life now. Perception of the ‘just beings’ blurs the distinction between people with and without disorders and allows us to have an opportunity to stop discrimination against the disabled. Female SFs do not recognize disabilities as a defect. In other words, disabilities are not a ‘problem’ to be corrected or eliminated but ‘Zoé’, definitely showing the subjectivity of disorders. In this sense, female SFs are producing the novel perception of the disabled and disorders.