첨단기술 시대의 몸을 통한 통제와 포스트휴먼 청소년의 성장: 스콧 웨스터펠드의 『어글리』 시리즈를 중심으로

Abstract

This paper discusses the relation between post-human discourses and the concepts of adolescence, and examines Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series, focusing on the concept of the human body being transformed using future technology, the matter of identity, and the growth of post-human adolescent characters. The adolescents are often characterized as ‘in-between’ and ‘hybrid,’ both including and excluding some characteristics of children and adults. This hybridity is also a characteristic of post-humans. The human body, transformed by future technology, is one of the controversial issues when people argue about a post-human society. Westerfeld’s novels are mainly about the highly advanced technology-based human body, and the specific standards of ‘beauty’ in a future society. In this society, called ‘The New Pretty Town’, everyone gets plastic surgery at the age of 16, and through the surgery, they obtain a ‘perfect’ face, new spotless skin, and a body with improved functions. However, this surgery is also a secret way of installing a ‘lesion’ in every adolescent, so that the ruling power can control their mindset and emotions for the security of the state. The children in Uglyville are educated to admire this standard of social beauty, and dream about entering the Pretty Town, after the surgery. However, the protagonist, Tally, with her friends, starts to take genuine adventures to restore her thinking ability, aiming to cure other ‘Pretties,’ and eventually uses her special ability to resist the controlling system and to overthrow it. Her subversion implies that even in a technological future society, subjectivity and the right to have freedom will be key issues for post-humans, and these post-humans are not going to give up such subjectivity. In Westerfeld’s novels, teenage protagonists are the people who resist the highly organized control system, and eventually find a new possibility, which is in line with other recent SF fictions whose protagonists are adolescents.