Liberal Educational Implications of Korean Women’s Science Fiction in the 2010s : Focusing on Cheon Seonran’s <I>A Thousand Blue</I>

Abstract

The emergence of women's science fiction in the 2010s is notable for its narrative achievements in imagining various possibilities of the ‘posthuman’ in the new reality brought about by the development of science and technology. Research on women’s science fiction has also been conducted in the context of the posthuman, with two main research trends: technofeminism, which affirms the union between women and science, and critical posthumanist research on ableism. However, these studies lack a perspective on animality that encompasses humans and nonhumans. The discussion of science fiction inevitably confronts the disregard for life and instrumentalist exploitation, which can be seen as increasing with the development of science and technology. Therefore, the issues of human and non-human minorities, vulnerability, and animality are the ultimate challenges of a posthuman society and are central to the discussion of science fiction. If posthumanism dreams of a ‘better’ post-human world, it should focus on ‘animals, including humans’. Therefore, in order to generate categories of thought for discussion topics that can be utilized in liberal arts education, this paper adds the animal axis to the existing discussion and discusses the correlation between the three concepts of minorities, vulnerability, and animality in Cheon Seonran’s science fiction novel <i>A Thousand Blue</i>. As we have seen, the educational implications of the novel are that it connects humans and animals through disability and points out the problems of the technological society that will come in the near future as an extension of today, pointing out that the posthuman society should be designed from the lowest position. In addition, the novel’s significance lies in the fact that it creates a point of debate, rather than simply sealing the issue by establishing a desirable human-animal relationship. The novel shows that by adding a species axis to the posthumanist discussion, we can start to think about how to redesign society.