• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.898-918
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• 2022

Contemporary fashion research has paid increasing attention to the sublimity in the context of postmodernism. Sublimity is considered essential in contemporary fashion design as it arouses complex emotions which verbal expression cannot describe. Therefore, contemporary fashion designs need to be interpreted in terms of the sublimity. Through a detailed review of literature, the present study discusses Kantian and Lyotardian sublimity as main theories representing conventional and cotemporary concepts of sublimity. This paper selected five Korean fashion designers who won the prize of Samsung Design Fund from 2006 to 2019 and actively introduce their works every year. Images were collected to analyze their designs introduced from 2018 S/S to 2019F/W at their website. In addition, formative and color characteristics were analyzed to identify the changing features of s sublimity. Major findings of analyses are as follows. First, all designers' collections reflected both male and female sublimity with the respect to its formative characteristics. Color characteristics of sublimity indicated that Jeong, Wook Jun's collections represented features of male sublimity and other designers works showed elements of female sublimity. Essentially, the typical contemporary concept of the sublimity was found in the designs of Seo, Hye In. Consequently, female sublimity is more inclusive than male sublimity, while being opened to otherness.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.53-94
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• 2021

This article pays attention to the gender representation of an abominable male abject that reveal class polarization in the movie Parasite. I seeks to read a new aspect of emotional politics in which a precariat man becomes a male patriarch while representing himself with an abhorrent position. Parasite shows a reversal of daughter and son responsible for parents, contrary to the existing family narrative. They teaches the parents' generation how to survive neoliberal that their place is created only when they take away others' place. However, after losing this prospect, Ki-woo confesses to his father that he is sorry first. Ki-taek also attempted to identify Dong-ik with the patriarch, but this male solidarity collapsed by class and committed murder in sudden anger. As a result, Gi-taek goes down to the hateful status of a stinking underground life, and Ki-woo receives a message of ethical reflection from his isolated father. The film gives the father and son the noble status of ethical fighter who fought against the structure of class polarization, especially the ending epilogue and narration emphasizing the ethical responsibility and mutual solidarity between father and son. In this process, the voices of female characters are gradually omitted, blurring gender screening for male characters. Parasite reveals the political reenactment strategy of precariat men in the age of neoliberalism, which is ethical subject by claiming to be a class abject himself. And representing the hate with gender-selecting, it is beautifying the responsible ethics of the patriarch.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.53
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• pp.103-130
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• 2018

The Chilean female writer María Luisa Bombal (1910 - 1980)'s "El ${\acute{a}}rbol$" (The Tree) (1939) tells the process of Brigida's epiphany. Brigida first tried to gain her father's love and failed, and later her husband's love and failed, then tried to substitute that love from men with solace from a tree. At the end of the novel, the epiphany occurs when the tree is cut down. In the present work, I explain the meaning of Brigida's epiphany, by comparing this Chilean short story with the Korean female writer Kim Chaewon(1946 - )'s "Trick of Water: A Kiss with Nothing" (2015). In this Korean short story, Kim insists that a woman who tries to find comfort in life through love with a man is destined to fail. I also examine the errors of the female characters' behaviors in these two short stories that led them to their self-destruction, trying to modify their behaviors in order to be loved by a man and their tendency to consider the man as everything in their life, and not as a part of their life. In order to explain the fated failure of finding comfort in life in the love of a man, I analyze the fleeting characteristic of acquiring an object of desire using Jacques Lacan's "Theory of Desire" and "The Destruction of the Elevated Object into the Dignity of the Thing." Thus, I conclude that women need to acknowledge that comfort in life cannot be found in the love of a man and that they should stop confining themselves to this fictitious characteristic of the dignified object called man.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• no.123
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• pp.137-185
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• 2018

This article aims to deconstruct the mechanism of male domination that constantly reproduces the hegemonic class of men. In order to overcome misogyny, we should no longer deny the ontological dimension of the reality of women's oppressions and the pre-eminence of the material condition of women's existence. In addition, the possibility of the category of women as a modality of resistance should be taken into consideration. First, I will highlight the correlation between penis and phallus according to which the phallus refers to the penis which is malleable and fragile and which disappears without being castrated by the external factor. From here we could deduce the fragility and imperfection, the non-absoluteness of the phallic order. Secondly, I will analyze the mechanism of penis-narcissism, which is the modality of the constitution of the individual identity of man. The penis is not only a physiological organ, but a site of self-estimation and the validity of the succession of power and authority of the father's law. With this penis-narcissism, man is constituted as a hegemonic body that can let itself go without worrying about the reactions of others. Thirdly, I will focus on the mechanism of the penis-cartel which is the modality of the formation of the collective identity. The penis-cartel is reinforced by the mutual affirmation of the superiority of men among themselves, but also by the permission and the tacit agreement of their absurdity and lack of rationality and corruption. Because the privilege of men is not monopolized by a small part of the elite, but is consciously and unconsciously shared by all men who are part of the hegemonic and collective category. In order to deconstruct the penis-narcissism and the penis-cartel, it is necessary to demonstrate that the penis is not a self-sufficient body, nor a closed and impermeable body, but that it is a porous body where the organ serves both ejaculation and urinary ejection. The penis is a porous body that is at once the site of sublimity and degradation, purity and impurity. In addition, the penis is no longer an all-powerful and aggressive organ, but it is a malleable and fluid flesh that constantly changes its shape. Linked to a phallus-organ that is the notion of Jacques-Alain Miller, it is a site of deficiency and vulnerability that is not the axis of the penis-cartel. It is through the notion of the double porosity of the penis and the phenomenology of the flesh of the penis, I try to provide the modality of undoing the reproductive mechanism of predatory masculinity. Because this would be an effective strategy to overcome misogyny.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.77-101
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• 2018

Even in our modern era, the projection of monsters in the recent literature contains the critical imagination of human existence for the posthuman age. The meaning of the monster-abject, especially as from the perspective of feministic criticism, contains criticism of the violent and oppressive patriarch as observed in the modern times. This article focuses on the gendered imagination of the discussions of the "abject" discussed by Julia Kristeva, and the "monstrous femine" discussed by Barbara Creed. Kim Eon-Hee's poems and Han Kang's novels, which have been examined extensively for analysis, show that the practical strategy of abject that goes beyond hate and sublime, wonder and joy through the imagination and concepts of monsters. The monster-abject strategy of Kim Eon-Hee's poem can be summarized by the narrative method of mirroring and the imagination of the truncated body. Mirroring falsification, which mimics the male speaker, is a method that some feminists strategically utilize in relation to the problem of female aversion in recent years as noted in the literature. In Kim Eon-Hee's poem, "becoming a man" and "imitating a man," through the method of mirroring appear as an image of cutting to dismantle the body. In that way, the narrative strategy of the abject that draws out abominations and bizarre effects which contains a strong critique of the patriarchal dominant ideology. The monster-abject strategy of Han-Kang's novel is embodied through the being of plants and the process of vegetarian-anorexia process. The world of the adject which was oppressed in the Han-Kang's novel, returns to the senses of the body through the symbol of the body. It is noted that the fictional characters who realize the repressed desire through the pathological symptom expressed by the female, go on to body perform active transformation. The sense of a body in a novel is not only a rejection of the world of animalman-civilization, but also a radically questioning of the noted and recognized boundaries between human beings and non-human being entities. The two writer's works show that the imagination of the monster-adject is not limited to rejecting the existing gender categories, but also goes in the direction of exploring the possibilities of various associated gender actions.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.47
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• pp.77-100
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• 2017

Memoirs of Hadrian is a representative historical novel of Yourcenar which focuses on the personal history of the Emperor Hadrian of Rome and on his inner side. This study focuses on the love story of Hadrian and Antinous, and examines the specificity of their love in relation to the homosexual culture of ancient Greece, especially pedophilia. Through this topic, we have analyzed the causes of the tragic death of Antinous by capturing the progression of a cycle of pedophilia, a young boy (Eromenos), that grows into manhood as Erastes. This study defines the emperor's efforts to restore Antinous in his own way after a failed love, as a passion toward totality. Therefore, we see the two figures as a process of mythology in which the pie of tragic destiny is transferred to the myth of androgyny that becomes one body and one unity in pedophilia. We see this ancient myth as a concept contrasting with the sense of pedophilia of the emperor, who arbitrarily distinguished between love and pleasure, and believed that the affection calculated with calmness and indifference was a harmony of love. This study explains the intention of Yourcenar in her work to present the value of empathic love, especially sacredness and sublime, which should be a part of sensual love. It also reminds us of the importance of sagacity that a person with power must hold in the happiest and most loving moments of life.