목적 없는 수단으로 존재하기: 에드가 앨런 포우의 단편을 중심으로

Abstract

This study not only explores how the value of capitalism inexorably shapes the human mind and behavior, but also discusses the concept of “American manhood,” in relation to 19th-century American culture in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Business Man.” Also, this study is based on the theory of “means without end” suggested by Giorgio Agamben. “Means without end” concerns a life that cannot be separated from its form and erases any obligatory relationship to an end. As a consequence, an individual or thing becomes available for a new use. In “The Businessman,” the eccentric narrator is Peter Proffit in which “f” is intentionally inserted to emphasize his characteristics. Peter pursues profit without regard for justice and public values. Because he recognizes the gap between his own characteristics as a human being and as a businessman, he changes his business at any time to boost his profit. He consciously and boldly exists as pure agency or as a means to make profit without an end; he neither demonstrates any professional consciousness nor devotes his work to the culture of American manhood. In conclusion, Peter’s life takes the form of “means without end” in society: he does not give up his own qualities as a human being, but he just plays out getting a job and satirizes the undifferentiated end in society. Finally, he becomes the political subject who both exposes the violence that forces individuals to follow social norms and keeps an extreme situation, in which Peter exists as a “whatever” being with a true identity different from his social identity.