오드라덱의 웃음: 세계종말의 비평

This article read the Odradek in Franz Kafka’s “The care of a Family man” as a metaphor for the ecological crisis that reached the threshold of the Anthropocene. Odradek is an allegory that requires as many interpretations as the beings in Kafka’s works. This article presupposes the Covid19 as an nonhuman object that repositions our entire lives and world horizons. These premises lead to new illumination of nonhuman beings such as Odradek. We also request critical intervention in the practice of placing human subject actors at the center of text interpretation. This article newly interpreted Odradek by referring to object-oriented ontology, new materialism, and dark ecology, which can be called nonhuman turn. The Covid19 pandemic is a sign of the end of the world. But that doesn’t mean apocalypticism, pandemic and climate change brings extinction to humans and ecosystems. The end of the world means that the meaning of the world we live in and understand has become useless. The object-oriented criticism that this article advocates explores the meaning of this end of the world.