기후소설 속 포스트인류세의 존재론적 전회 : 바다와 고래의 궤적에 나타난 행성적 윤리와 공존의 서사

초록

This study examines how the ecological crisis of the Anthropocene is manifested in contemporary Korean climate fiction. To this end, the study analyzes Chun Seon-ran’s Ressi, Choi Jeong-hwa’s Great Pacific Dead Body Patch, and Djuna’s People from the Dead Whale. In Choi Jeong-hwa’s narrative, the ocean reveals the ‘stickiness’ of a hyperobject, where the materiality of ‘mucus’—a mixture of human civilizational waste and corpses—overwhelms human cognition and adheres tenaciously to the subject. This signifies the end of the modern perspective that viewed nature as an objective target of observation. In the ensuing discussion, the death and absence of whales in the works of Djuna and Chun Seon-ran are analyzed as signifiers symbolizing not just biological extinction, but the collapse of the physical foundations sustaining human civilization and the catastrophe of anthropocentric thought systems. Djuna exposes the parasitic existence of humans who depend on non-human beings, while Chun Seon-ran reconstructs the whale as an autonomous agent, thereby urging a planetary ethics upon humanity. In conclusion, these three works sensualize the ecological crisis through the signifiers of the ocean and the whale, emphasizing that humans are interdependent members rather than predators of the ecosystem. This study reveals that post-Anthropocene literature does not merely portray future fears but seeks existential answers on how humans and non-humans can encounter and unite horizontally amidst ruins. This holds significant literary significance as an attempt by post-Anthropocene literature to go beyond the representation of disaster and establish a minimal ethical foothold for a sustainable planetary future. Meanwhile, this study carries scholarly significance in that it elucidates how contemporary Korean climate fiction is transmuting the crisis of the Anthropocene into existential discourse.

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