소아마비에서 코로나 19까지: 『네메시스』 속 감염병과 존재윤리 연구

초록

This study aims to investigate how epidemic or pandemic contagious disease is represented in fiction by analyzing Nemesis, Philip Roth’s most recent novel published in 2011. Nemesis takes on polio endemic in a Jewish community located at Newark in 1944 where Bucky Cantor, a young and healthy Jewish gym teacher who ironically could not be enlisted to the army because of his poor eyesight, struggles with polio endemic. This essay traces down how Bucky, as a mythic character, tussles with theological conundrum and scientific explanations to explain why his pupils die of polio. The essay also delineates how bio-politics operates in a full quarantine of the city and how people react to this state of exception utilizing Giorgio Agamben’s theories. Bucky decides to retreat into Indian camp where his fiance waits in order to avoid polio but he could not help finding himself contagious, which results in tragic consequences. The paper, alongside delving into the narrative, unfolds how contagious disease debunks ethico-ontological meaning of ‘shame’ in humanity and aporia of communal ethics.

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