A Study of Human/Animal Liminality in Postmodern Plays: applying 'Otherness', 'Becoming', and Ecological Coexistence

탈근대 희곡에 나타난 인간동물의 탈경계성 연구 타자성, -되기(devenir) , 생태적 공존을 중심으로-

In these days, we come across a growing interest in animals from various perspectives. Considering that the posthumanistic point of view forms the major stream of postmodern humanities, ethics and philosophies, this paper tries to study the liminality between human beings and animal as appear in postmodern plays. The cases of a middle-aged architect falling in love with a goat (The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? by Edward Albee); An abandoned (human-)dog that encounters his old mistress under the moonlight (A leaseholder by Yoon Young-sun); Coexistence of men, dog, plants in a Country life (White Cherry by Bae Sam-sik); A Mutual sympathy between a swarm of bees and a woman dying of cancer(Bee by Bae Sam-sik) were discussed referring such concepts as 'Otherness' of Derrida, 'Becoming'of Deleuze, 'a bare life' of Agamben and ecological co-existence. In The Goat, the moment of Martin who happened to meet a goat's eyes in a suburbs can be paralleled with that of Derrida who one day found himself caught up with the gaze of a cat in the bathroom while he was naked. They shared the common experience in that they went through the ontological and mysterious abyss that rendered them to raise the question of "Who am I ?" In A leaseholder, a young woman returns to her hometown exhausted by the calculating human society and meet her old time (human-dog). This story reminds us of Agamben's werewolf, Levinas's dog Bobby and Derrida's Zootobiography. He, an abandoned pet, both excluded and included from human society, now appearing as a mysterious human-dog, welcomes, embraces, and comprehends his old mistress and exposes his individual remorses and passions as an animal-subject. In White Cherry, the author describes the coexistence of all the life-beings such as an old dog, a golden bell tree, the deceased daughter and even a fossil remains in a country life. Bee is a story of a beekeeping village where bees were leaving and disappearing. A swam of bees fly down on a woman who was dying of cancer. With physical and spiritual empathy the dying woman helps the swarm of bee to conduct a new birth and a new life.