코키스의『퀘벡의 죽음의 무도』(La danse macabre du Québec 1999)에 구현된 포스트모던 죽음관

The Postmodern Death in Kokis's La danse macabre du Québec

Kokis's La danse macabre du Quebec is a grotesque upheaval of danse macabre which has been undercurrent in the Western tradition of thanatology. If Holbein the Younger's danse macabre(1538) and Wiliam Combe's danse macabre(1815) portrayed characters with flaws respectively in terms of Faith in personal God in the age of Christianity and Reason in the age of Enlightenment, Kokis delineates characters who have turned grotesque by losing their identity in the quagmire of Postmodern illness. Divested of the overarching God in the post Darwinian age as well as the selthood in late capitalism, people tend to anchor their existentialist origin to "l'essor de la culture physique". In eulogy of physical culture, they promote carnal pleasure by indulging in gluttony and succumbing to the tyranny of appearance instead of enriching their soul. Their enthrallment to bodily pleasure fortified by the consumer addiction creates a fantasy which is a far cry from the reality. Lost in this fantasy and addiction, they fail to locate and recognize themselves as a subject of their action. In that respect, the Death in the postmodern age does not have to exert such efforts as his former skeletons did in Holbein's and Combe's writings. He does not meet, consult with and judge their potential patrons; "the hollow men with their headpiece filled with straws" float voluntarily toward the Death and offer themselves for free. The most pitiable tragedy is that postmodern victims of the Death flounder in the mud of carnal pleasure peppered with stressful competition thereby staying blind to their fate(Sein-zum-Tode) until their ownmost death.