소설 『페스트』와 『당신들의 천국』을 통해 살펴 본‘메르스’ 사태에 대한 생태인문학적 고찰

Abstract

This paper contemplates implications of the novel Le Peste and Your Heaven seeing MERS affairs, which recently battered Korean society, in terms of Eco-humanities. Notwithstanding the development of scientific technology of civilization, everybody has experienced anxiety that they can be exposed to the threat of new kind epidemic and various viruses. These ecological risks become the task that should be controlled and prevented by everybody not just by a specific group or a region. From this point, citizens’ attitudes of Le Peste show original form of Governance that our society has to seek as a social risk management strategy. They recognized “pest” not a personal problem but their own problem, organizing health organization units, and did their best to perform a role of independent citizen. Rather than reliance on government officers, they show the possibility of voluntary Governance from below to settle the problem. On the other hand, the novel Your Heaven shows lethargic individual’s attitude on the community’s problem. Director Cho, Bak-Heon intention to reform Sorokdo Island was good, but it was executed unilaterally failing to induce residents’ consents and agreements. Thus, passive attitudes of residents of Sorokdo Isaland, not expressing their opinions well, just ended up as your heaven (not our heaven). In conclusion, the thing we can find from two texts is that better society lies in citizens’ power not in relying on a heroic leader or a government. In critical situations, for the public interests, Governance establishment that based on citizens’ conscious participation and members’ mutual trust with cooperation can show promising perspective of our society. By actively expressing and voluntarily participating on the community issue, if we expand the role of citizen-centric Governance, it will cause a little confusion no matter whether second MERS affairs occur in the future. Especially like the civil experience of the city of Oran’s conquest against the pest, showed in the novel Le Peste, if the value of voluntary solidarity is harmonized, crisis situations that our society currently face can be easily settled down.