This paper examines, through three works by Motoya Yukiko—The Real Trip(本当の旅), Fatso’s Happy Birthday(でぶのハッピーバースデー), and Oshiko’s Default(推子のデフォルト)—the pressures that digital network society exerts on the human subject across three levels: image, body, and subject. In The Real Trip, images on SNS replace the sense of reality, and amid conformity pressure the characters edit even imminent danger into a good atmosphere, ultimately arriving at catastrophe. Fatso’s Happy Birthday depicts the extremes of digital capitalism, in which the body and suffering themselves are circulated as content, sharply exposing how the vulnerable are laid bare within this structure. Oshiko’s Default, at the terminus of this trajectory, presents a landscape in which human beings desire to become non-human, shifting from “living entities” to “object-like entities.” The double-bind structure in which both rejection and acceptance lead to the dissolution of the subject is the most chilling future vision that digital technology society can reach. Through this analysis, the paper demonstrates that the three works depict the gradual disintegration of human existence at three levels—image, body, and subject—and positions Motoya’s works as cautionary texts warning that the connection and authentic self promised by digital technology society may in fact culminate in isolation and the dissolution of the subject. Finally, it argues that the grotesque reversal at each novel’s ending, and the black humor it generates, are precisely what powerfully sustain this thematic consciousness, constituting the strength and the appeal of Motoya’s literature.
한국일본언어문화학회 [Japanese Language & Culture Association of Korea]
설립연도
2001
분야
인문학>일본어와문학
소개
본 학회는 일본어학 및 일본문학은 물론, 일본의 정치, 경제, 문화, 사회 등의 일본학 전반에 걸친 연구 및 일본의 언어, 문화를 매체로 한 한국과의 비교 연구를 대상으로 하고 있다. 본 학회는 회원들에게 연구 발표 및 정보 교환의 기회를 부여하고 나아가 한국에서의 바람직한 일본 연구 자세를 확립하는 것을 주된 목표로 하고 있다.