• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.70
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• pp.66-94
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• 2015

Postcolonialism, as a school of thought, has become enormously influential for understanding the recent phenomena of globalization. While rejecting the universalizing categories of the Enlightenment, postcolonialism has called into question the old idea of culture and identity as a transcendent regime of authenticity and purity. It has also celebrated the diasporic experiences that entail porous and hybrid cultural identities as a potential site of struggle and resistance against the dominant cultural and discursive order. It is argued, however, that postcolonial theory's emancipatory claims relating to the diversified global culture tend to be complicit with transnational capitalism that brings about global issues of material as well as cultural injustice. This article, through a thorough review of the ways the postcolonial theoretical framework has been developed and appropriated by main figures in postcolonial scholarship, seeks for a theoretical and critical strategy to grasp the complex conditions of global inequality.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.173-196
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• 2018

This study, which works to develop a method of focusing on A Quiet Dream by Zhang Lu, explored the structural differences of films and the changes in Zhang Lu's aim and perspective as noted in films, by a review to grasp his internal changes in texts and contextual factors. In A Quiet Dream, Zhang Lu made a filmic attempt that had never been made in the world of films prior to that date. He tried an aesthetic experiment on how films could reorganize the world, by using the effect of obscuring the boundary between reality and dream in films and generating a new narrative regarding filmic reality, actual reality, and the life and artistic truth of the Diaspora. Generally speaking, the changes in the narrative in A Quiet Dream seem to be his resistance against himself and the Diaspora. Thus, in the discussion about A Quiet Dream, relying on the external factors intervening in the relationship between the subject of creation and films is not a useful endeavor at this time. Consequently, it is noted that after settling down in Korea, Zhang Lu could directly approach the changes in the cultural position of films in multilayered ways, where films were the most dynamic part of his life. Due to the changes in the Diaspora, he could obscure the boundary for the first time in the world of films and experiment with how films could escape develop an interesting perspective that deviated from reality, and made a new goal to show new ideas regarding the individual's awareness of the world.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.146-160
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• 2009

Recent studies on development are increasingly focusing on analyzing development discourse and de constructing its institutionalization process in the nation-state. By pushing up the limit of the research on development, these studies particularly emphasize how development is articulated with the nation-state, its governmentality, and various representations. These studies overall consider development a powerful discourse, which invents under-development, mobilizes resources for changing particular space, and institutionalizes modem systems of socio-spatial control at a local scale. In this sense, it is particularly interesting to look at how the nation-state, faced with the deterritorialization of labor and capital, reterritorializes overseas resources and networks for the purpose of development. By problematizing the Overseas Koreans Foundation as a transnational state apparatus, this paper interrogates the way in which its institutionalized practices conjure up the national imagination, ethnic solidarity, and collective allegiance to the homeland in diaspora communities. This paper conclusively reports that the state apparatus circulates the discourse of transnational nationalism in Korean diaspora so as to appropriate their resources and networks for securing foreign currencies and investment in the homeland.

• Sijohaknonchong
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• v.30
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• pp.53-90
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• 2009

This study discusses the aspects of Korean-American Sjjo writers' consciousness of sijo and its significance, focusing primarily on the Sijo-Anthologies of Korean-American authors, "The Moon of the Desert" (1989), "The Dandelion of the Desert" (1994), and The Stars of the Desert" (1996) published by the Sijo Society of America. For this purpose, I thoroughly examined "Notes of Writing Sijo' attached to the authors' works and some other sijos added at the end of the paper. They started writing sijos quite early. Sijo has been recognized as a typical traditional genre of literature, and even foreigners came to write them in English. The following is the summary of the view on sijo propounded by Korean-American authors. Firstly, they follow traditional view on the theory of sijo in terms of its nature and utility, and at the same time they emphasize the utility of katharsis through self expressions. Secondly, their recognition of the value of sijo boils down to its formal patterns. Lastly, they develop the idea of national literature through their significance of writing sijos. They think that they can contribute to the development of national literature as well as the expression of patriotism through writing sijos. Therefore, they recognize themselves as spreaders of Korean culture to the local residents, and as the main stream enhancing the status of Korean culture through the competition with other nations.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.907-930
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• 2010

Most previous studies on A Gesture Life focused on illuminating the role and significance of Kkutaeh, the Korean comfort woman, whom Hata runs across at a military camp in the Burmese jungle. For instance, Carroll Hamilton argues that the return of Kkutaeh as a traumatic subject disrupts Hata's nationalist narrative, causing the protagonist's eventual failure at national enfranchisement. However, this paper focuses on Hata's relationship with Bedley Run, the sleepy suburban white town, in which the protagonist settles down right after immigration to the US. The racial/racist nature of Bedley Run has not received due critical attention, although a few studies on the novel saw Hata's gestures as a survival tactic deployed against the hostile environment of his new host society. This paper, resorting to Pierre Macherey's thesis on symptomatic reading, exposes what Hata, the narrator/protagonist, hides from his readers concerning his status in his muchbeloved town; and it also explores the subversive significance of Hata's ethnic memories. The aim of this study is, after all, to map both the subversive possibilities and the limitations of Hata's immigrant narrative as a bildungsroman.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.231-242
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• 2019

(2014) directed by British-born second generation Iranian-American Ana Lily Amirpour, set in 'the Iranian ghost-town Bad City' attempts to make how the hybridization of multi-cultures makes interesting interpretations culture-politically, presenting a female vampire skateboarding in a striped t-shirt and a black chador. In traditional horror films, mainly male-Dracula was the center of the vampire narrative as other, but since the post-modernism era, vampire films try to shift women from the passive and dependent victim to the subjective and independent main agent. And the main character of the film, 'The Girl' who is a female Muslim vampire takes a step forward to punish men who commit gender violence. Shot in black and white, the film puts images ahead of narrative, while featuring Iranian actors, speaking Farsi. Furthermore, the film crosses over Iranian politics into American-European pop cultures with this eclectic mix of Iran's rock, British electro-pop and Ennio-Morricone-like western stylings. This study focuses on the style featured in which has successfully transformed and transplanted a vampire story into a critical contemporary discourse, mixing multiple genres and citing cultural trends while not following the traditional conventions of vampire films.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.48
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• pp.361-389
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• 2017

This essay examines 'precarity politics' by Judith Butler, a well-known gender theorist and queer philosopher, in Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015) focused on concepts as unchosen cohabitation of Hannah Arendt and unwilled proximity of Emmanuel Levinas. Butler's precarity politics is the condition of our dispossessed political beings with fundamental vulnerability and interdependency that cannot choose with whom we will live on this Earth. Butler's political ethics is twofold: on one hand, she examines significance of 'action'' the most significant vita activa in the public area, and 'plurality'' the condition-not only the necessary condition but the possible condition-for a political life suggested by Hannah Arendt in Human Condition; on the other hand, Butler reflects upon global precarity based on a diasporic precarious life in the social world towards freedom and equality. Unchosen cohabitation of plural humans on Earth, and global pervasion of precarity, that indicates "politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death," so called "differential distribution of precariousness," are practical possibilities of ethical and equal cohabitation of different ethnic groups in the social world. Ethical obligations or ethical demand to respond to others' suffering in distance and proximity originated from precarity politics, mentioned in Precarious Life, Parting Ways, and Frames of War, could be non-foundational joint of plural people living together globally. We should presume the 'reversibility' of distance and proximity in others' suffering, based on responsiveness and responsibility of others, if we want to stay attuned to the pain of others we never chose to live together. That is the significance of Butler's 'precarity politics' with 'ethical obligation' to accept 'unchosen plurality' of living population on Earth, and 'reversibility between of distance and proximity,' in her 'new plural and embodied body politics' or 'new corporeal ontology', through human primary vulnerability, fundamental interdependency, being exposed and responsive to suffering of others.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.195-228
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to review the mobility-based textual research methods raised in Mobility and Foucault and apply them to textual analysis. This book contains seven articles applying Foucault's terms to mobility studies, giving intellectual stimulation to both studies. Since Foucault examined discipline power operated through the technology of distinguishing between rational/irrational and normal/abnormal, his works seem to a study of closed spaces like prisons. However, the authors of this book note that Foucault's works already had sufficient insight on mobility, and them actively incorporated it into mobility study. When we concentrate Foucault's works on mobility as a governmentality and a dispositif, the tension and dynamics between mobility and immobility are emphasized. And then it is possible to cross the simple dichotomy in mobility studies. This paper analyzes Kim Joong-hyuk's short story 1F/B1 by applying this method. This story describes a building manager who seems to be fixed in a building, but the mobility of him in the story goes through stereotypes and creates new spaces. Kim Hye-jin's short stories also represent mobility that cannot move and hesitates. These stories are important in that they show the mobility as a dispositif that constitutes the subject. When referring to the achievements of Mobility and Foucault, we read this narrative again by paying attention to the dynamics of mobility and immobility in the text. The significance of this paper is that it expands mobility-based textual research anew. While text analysis applying mobility study was usually focused on clearly mobile narratives such as travel statements and diaspora narratives, Mobility and Foucault drives new textual research by paying attention to the relationship between power and mobility, mobility and immobility dynamics. Therefore, this paper is significant in confirming the new meaning of the text revealed when paying attention to the representation of mobility in the narrative that no one seems to be mobile, and seeking to expand the mobility-based textual research method.