『철의 시대』: 무조건적 환대의 가능성

Age of Iron of J. M. Coetzee:Possibility of the Unconditional Hospitality Jun, So Young (Kyung Hee University) Coetzee’s concern with hospitality is evident in his extensive use of it in his many fictions. Age of Iron is one of his novels that shows a form of unconditional hospitality. Mrs Curren has been visited unexpectedly by a stranger, Vercueil and taken care of him without any condition. Since the arrival of the stranger is unannounced and wholly unexpected, Mrs Curren as a hostess loses her sovereignty over a visitor to her home. She is opened up to and invaded by the visitor’s difference or otherness. Mrs Curren only gives herself to the stranger through being invaded and dispossessed of her self by him. But the visitor is not only a “liberator” but also a life-giver to Mrs Curren dying of cancer because to open oneself to the other is to free oneself by escaping from closure in oneself. Also, a writer or his text could be described as a host to a reader, that is an unknown visitor in terms of the metaphor of hospitality. In failing to name, invite, and control its visitor, the novel, which is the writer’s spectral gift of self, opens itself to the possibility of being invaded, possessed, and controlled by it. The text must await the arrival of a reader via a kind of unconditional hospitality because a reader cannot be expected or controlled.