Earticle

초록

영어

This paper explores Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of two different forms of life—“bare life” defined in Homo Sacer and “happy life” in Coming Community—discussing their relationship with Michael K’s identity in J. M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K. Michael’s solitary yet sufficient life as a gardener offers us a more extended way of understanding Agamben’s notions of “happy life,” or “form-of-life.” Throughout the novel, Michael undergoes a significant transformation. At the beginning, his life in many ways resembles Agamben’s concept of “bare life,” but soon new form of life begins to emerge in his deserted condition of life. In other words, Coetzee later in the novel shows us a touch of hope and political futurity through Michael’s passive-active resistance against the government’s identity politics. However, Agamben’s “pure potentials” should not be confused with moralistic values such as will power, faith, and determination. Rather, it is achieved when one’s state of abandonment is pushed to the extreme beyond any light of humanistic values. Both Coetzee in Life & Times of Michael K and Agamben in his theories well demonstrate what it means to live as a “bare life” and what mode of being inaugurates the true “form-of-life” in today’s global biopolitical system.

목차

I. 서론
 II. “벌거벗은 생명”과 수용소의 의미
 III. “목적없는 수단”으로서의 마이클의 몸
 IV. 결론
 Works Cited
 Abstract

키워드

저자

• 임태연 [ Lim, Tae Yun | 세종대학교 ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  영어영문학연구 [The Jungang Journal of English Language and Literature]

• 간기

  계간

• pISSN

  1598-3293

• 수록기간

  1968~2026

• 등재여부

  KCI 등재

• 십진분류

  KDC 840 DDC 810