동물과 함께, 식물과 더불어, 기계와 나란히 : 18세기 영문학과 포스트휴머니즘 = Thinking with Animals, Plants, and Machines: The Nonhuman Turn in Eighteenth-Century British Studies

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This essay presents an overview of recent studies in the field of eighteenth-century British literature and culture, 1660-1800. Rather than aiming for coverage, I focus on one particular emerging critical theory―the nonhuman turn―as a critical move that fundamentally reshapes the landscape of eighteenth-century studies. This essay has two express goals. On the one hand, it poses a question what we can achieve through our “theoretical” engagement with literary texts when theory (or Theory) in general is reportedly on the decline. This review calls into question whether the recent ascendancy of posthumanism provides an alternative model of thinking, capable of resolving a myriad of pressing concerns of the twenty-first century, such as ethical relations to other, climate change, and autonomy and political sovereignty. On the other hand, I argue that the nonhuman turn, in effect, significantly revises and therefore enriches the way we read eighteenth-century texts and cultural practices despite complaints of anachronism or presentism lodged against any attempts for a posthumanist reading. My critical review examines select scholarly monographs published over the last fifteen years―ones that center on contemporary representations of the nonhuman such as nonhuman animals, machines, and plants―and those that examine human-nonhuman relationships in multifarious encounter zones. Also, many scholarly works put under critical scrutiny here are a testify to the fruitfulness of posthumanism within eighteenth-century studies, for it recognizes anew the agency of the nonhuman imbricated in colonial, commercial, and epistemological networks of the period. Nearing the end of this essay, in which I review academic conferences that took place at different venues during the last five years, I suggest that posthumanism is a timely theoretical move that will decenter the human within power grids that implicate the human and the nonhuman alike. The ultimate stakes of posthumanism are therefore both political and ethical.

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