Earticle

초록

영어

Thomas Pynchon(1937- )’s novels contain a number of critiques of contemporary technocratic culture, which has brought about no less negative side-effects than benefits and advantages. Most relevant to this paper is the writer’s critique of simulacral culture, the kind of culture that the French postmodern sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929- ) finds prevalent in postmodern society. Drawing a connection between Baudrillard and Pynchon, this paper examines how nature, natural materials, and human nature become stripped of naturalness in the culture of artificiality and virtuality. Pynchon’s novels present various scenes in which the natural turns into the virtual or the artificial is recreated as a meticulously designed artificial environment; the dominance of car culture causes the degradation of nature to a mere backdrop for drivers; natural materials are replaced by synthetic polymers; human nature gets objectified, mechanized, and reified. All these phenomena can be interpreted as a warning against the possible loss of the natural as a result of the so-called postmodern “loss of the real” in contemporary technocratic and simulacral culture.

목차

I. The Resurrec1ion of Na1ure as an Ar1ificialEnvironment
 II. Car Culture
 III. Plasticity : The End of Natural Substances
 IV. Against the Excess of Technophilia
 Works Cited
 Abstract

키워드

토머스 핀천 장 보드리야르 포스트모던 문화 시뮬레이크럼 가상성 실제의 상실 자연성의 상실 Thomas Pynchon Jean Baudrillard postmodern culture simulacrum virtuality loss of the real loss of the natural

저자

• Kim, Yeonman [ 김연만 | Seowon University ]

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