최근 SF 어린이청소년문학의 여성주의적 분석

Abstract

This study analyses recent science fiction (SF) for children and young adults, focusing on main issues of SF related to feminism, such as a maternal bond, the relationship between women and technology, sexuality and love, and minorities. Since the 1960s, in-depth research and critiques on SF including theoretical approaches such as Marxism, feminism, queer theory, postmodernism, ecology, and futurology have been increased in the U.S. and U.K., which emphasized the potential of SF as literature. Particularly, the approaches related to feminism can be meaningful as they overset patriarchal structures and dismantle and reconstruct traditional theories based on gender. This study examines SF based on cyborg feminism by Donna Haraway and Technofeminism by Judy Wajcman, which have been considered representative feminist theories of technology. In the 1960s and 1970s, SF for children and young adults had been created and translated in South Korea, along with various genres of literature, and since the 2010s, the SF had been actively created again and shown the novelty in literature. However, currently, it seems the SF has lost its vitality and reiterates similar dystopian perspectives. Therefore, this study based on feminism intends to indicate the various and extensive potential of SF as literature. Feminism SF would contribute to overall literature for children and young adults as it has both the creativity of SF that dismantles the world of ‘now and here’ and the worldview of feminism that listens to the voices of minorities and vulnerable populations including women. Children and young adults are minorities in our ‘now and here’ society that adults controls and administers. The revolutionary and innovative creativity of SF, which is different from realism literature for children and adults, would awaken the current and future directions of literature for children and young adults and facilitate new writing experiments.