피에르 불의 소설 『혹성 탈출』을 통해 본 문화기호학의 주요 쟁점들

Abstract

In the science fiction novel titled The planet of the apes (1963), PierreBoulle tells a story about a completely reversed world where the apes dominate the humans. Coming from the normal world that is ours, a small group of people is totally embarrassed and confused by observing this strange world. On the planet of the apes that they have discovered, it is the apes that are more intelligent then the humans. On the earth, it was the other way around. That observation results in their perplexity which is, in our view, of the essentially ethnologicalorder. The two communities, human and simian, bear with one another the relationship that corresponds to what Lotman calls ‘enantiomorphic pairings.’ In this context, a series of questions deserve to be raised: Is a ‘common language’ possible? If the answer is yes, how can it be created? What are those things that people can share in that situation? In rereading The planet of the apes from a culturological point of view, we would like to formulate a response to those questions.