Abstract

Abstract:

This paper tries to diagnose the meaning of the 'world' today. I sought to analyze the web drama Dramworld and the cultural, technological conditions surrounding it. Dramaworld is a type of time-slip drama in which two worlds, "reality-America" and "virtual-Korea(drama)," overlap. Here I have raised three questions and tried to approach the meaning of the world today. First, what is 'Dramaworld'? Second, what is the meaning of the overlap between these two worlds, America(reality) and Korea(drama)? Finally, what is the relationship between new media, especially smartphone, and the world? In the technological conditions of new media, users resemble like Leibniz's monad. It looks like a self-enclosed being with "no windows." However, paradoxically, it results in a connection with the whole, not a separation from the world. The world today seems to have blurred the boundaries between the whole and part, universal and particular, and reality and virtual. Loss of standard usually leads to loss of stability. For that reason, the voices of far right-wing and fundamentalism are revitalized in some parts of the world. What they demand is a society/state without "windows," as a pseudo-monadic society/state, that has no relationship to the other. But that reactionary demand only causes the catastrophe rather than bringing stability. At the end of Dramaworld, the stage of the drama is switched over to the real world, not the virtual-drama world. The boundary between two worlds seems to have disappeared. It indicates that it is impossible to secure stability with a sense of the past.

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