레이먼드 카버의 단편 소설에 나타난 사물의 재현과 정동의 정치학 연구

초록

This study aims to investigate how ‘thing’ and its politics of affect in contemporary American consumer society are represented in the stories written by Raymond Carver, a prominent short story writer known for his minimalism and terse representation of artificial things in American society which set forth accurate but nihilistic vision of the post-Fordism society. This paper utilizes various theories mainly focusing on Bill Brown's ‘theory of thing’ as well as Gilles Deleuze's interpretation of ‘affect’ in Spinoza's philosophy. Affect is different from emotion in that it embeds a spectrum of corporeal changes that affect upon and is affected by subject's or other's body(bodies) and things. Thing also affects upon and is affected by human bodies, which creates a milieu of affect where, as Brian Massumi and other scholars observe, politics of affect occurs via micro-politics and micro-perception. After expounding politics of affect and affective labor, the paper delves into Raymond Carver's stories where characters reify others and are nihilistically and fetishistically obsessed with artificial objects. Things as objects bring forth affects in protagonists' bodies and their relationships with others in social space. The paper in sum accounts for what this affect means in the context of contemporary American literature and society.

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