기억과 서사, 기술복제 시대의 예술: 카즈오 이시구로의 『나를 보내지 마』 읽기 (Memory, Narrative, and Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: A Reading of Gazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 영미문학연구회
· 수록지 정보 : 안과밖:영미문학연구 / 50호 / 409 ~ 441페이지
· 저자명 : 박여선

초록

Focusing on transnational quality of Ishiguro’s novels in formal and thematic aspect, Rebecca Walkowitz argues that Ishiguro’s works can be valid examples of the new world literature that demands a new standard for scholarship, the focus of which is to compare multitudinous manifestations of a work in the network of different literary systems.
Building on Walkowitz’s observation on transnational quality of Ishiguro’s novels, this paper explores ambivalent stance that Ishiguro takes in Never Let Me Go between two poles: one the national myth and humanism conceived on the basis of the concepts of identity, originality and authenticity, and the transnational network and posthumanism (or inhumanism) with stress on the value of unoriginality and aesthetics of copying. The critical investigation into the dualistic rhythm of the narrative in the novel leads to discussion of Kathy as an unreliable narrator and internal friction this narrator creates within the form of autobiography. This paper argues that Kathy’s narrative mimics, replicates, and reproduces psychological realism that records inwardness of humans using cliches and colloquialism. Conclusively in the novel, authenticity is nullified in ways authenticity is acknowledged, while cliche is approved in ways it is defied. In a word, Kathy’s narrative performs aesthetics of copying, suggesting a new standard of values in aesthetics and politics. In order to clarify what implications this new standard has for contemporary artwork, the paper draws on Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the radical change made to art in the age of mechanical reproduction, along with his emphases on reading history as a process of activating memory of what has been (in)completed in the past. This paper concludes that Ishiguro’s ambivalent posture throughout the work is not deliberate, but tracing their mechanical nature in his faithful portrayal of the clones, the author unknowingly reaches a critical point of revealing their inhuman or ahuman ethics and values in their mechanicality. Never Let Me Go throws profound questions regarding the boundaries between humans and nonhumans defined by mechanicality, setting a new standard for the relationship between the two.

영어초록

Focusing on transnational quality of Ishiguro’s novels in formal and thematic aspect, Rebecca Walkowitz argues that Ishiguro’s works can be valid examples of the new world literature that demands a new standard for scholarship, the focus of which is to compare multitudinous manifestations of a work in the network of different literary systems.
Building on Walkowitz’s observation on transnational quality of Ishiguro’s novels, this paper explores ambivalent stance that Ishiguro takes in Never Let Me Go between two poles: one the national myth and humanism conceived on the basis of the concepts of identity, originality and authenticity, and the transnational network and posthumanism (or inhumanism) with stress on the value of unoriginality and aesthetics of copying. The critical investigation into the dualistic rhythm of the narrative in the novel leads to discussion of Kathy as an unreliable narrator and internal friction this narrator creates within the form of autobiography. This paper argues that Kathy’s narrative mimics, replicates, and reproduces psychological realism that records inwardness of humans using cliches and colloquialism. Conclusively in the novel, authenticity is nullified in ways authenticity is acknowledged, while cliche is approved in ways it is defied. In a word, Kathy’s narrative performs aesthetics of copying, suggesting a new standard of values in aesthetics and politics. In order to clarify what implications this new standard has for contemporary artwork, the paper draws on Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the radical change made to art in the age of mechanical reproduction, along with his emphases on reading history as a process of activating memory of what has been (in)completed in the past. This paper concludes that Ishiguro’s ambivalent posture throughout the work is not deliberate, but tracing their mechanical nature in his faithful portrayal of the clones, the author unknowingly reaches a critical point of revealing their inhuman or ahuman ethics and values in their mechanicality. Never Let Me Go throws profound questions regarding the boundaries between humans and nonhumans defined by mechanicality, setting a new standard for the relationship between the two.

참고자료

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