ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This article explores the possibility of coexistence between human and nonhuman beings within what may be categorized as “plant SF,” Kim Cho-yeop’s Dispatchers and Tsukui Itsuki’s Cornutopia. Both texts share several characteristics: a post-apocalyptic disaster narrative, a conflict narrative around “conquest versus coexistence,” an attempt to overcome anthropocentrism through the “material turn” and new materialist epistemologies, and the configuration of a posthuman subject. Despite their shared anti-anthropocentric premises, the two texts diverge in their conclusions. Dispatchers portrays human–nonhuman hybrids that risk assimilation and absorption into the “Flood”. In contrast, Cornutopia presents a space akin to a “garden,” in which all beings remain independent while entering into relations with one another. Furthermore, both texts may be read as conscious enactments of “alien phenomenology.” As evidenced in both texts, alien phenomenology moves beyond anthropocentrism to record the processes of interaction and transformation between humans and nonhumans. As suggested by the three protagonists of Cornutopia, this approach implies a methodology in which social transformation must accompany alternative forms of science and humanistic reflection.

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