섬에서 에코톤으로—경계중첩지대로서의 자연인식과 생태비평적 함의

초록

Based on its geophysical feature, the island has long been recognized as a separate and self-sustaining space independent of neighboring continent or other islands. Literary tradition has used the island as a metaphor for a utopian alternative to mundane human society with its various kinds of wrongdoings. Recent nature writings have taken up this island metaphor to emphasize the wholeness of the ecosystem in specifically designated natural community or landscapes such as national parks or wilderness preservation areas. Human-nature relations as border-divided area is also recognized as the island.Modern island biogeography, however, has disproved such a concept of islands as autonomous, revealing the contrasting fact that the richness of species on an undisturbed island is determined largely by species immigration from and emigration to a source of colonists. This scientific finding has posited the island as the interconnected nature, but the public and metaphoric use of it still resorts to the old concept of it as isolated and autonomous nature,because this image has been ingrained deeply in our consciousness and culture. Considering the negative consequences from the recognition of nature and nature-humans as isolated space, we need a new nature metaphor that embodies interconnectedness in nature and of human-nature relations. Such feature of interconnectedness is best embedded in the concept of ecotone. Some ecotones are created and maintained through human participation in nature, and this human induced nature of ecotone denotes the possibilities of a constructive relation between them. The substitution of the island with the ecotone as the concept of nature and the image of human-nature relations is expected to correct ecocritical practices of reading of nature writing, which has been predominantly interpreted within the orientation of nature itself and nature-human relations as an isolated and self-autonomous island. Adopting the ecotone in literary study enables ecocriticism to dig out cultural elements embedded in nature writing and reveal socio-political, ideological factors hidden behind the writers’ portrayal of nature as islands.

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