• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.40
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• pp.111-131
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• 2015

An unusual success engendering loyalty among cult fans in the United States, Mamoru Oshii's 1995 cyberpunk anime, Ghost in the Shell (GITS) revolves around a female cyborg assassin named Motoko Kusanagi, a.k.a. "the Major." When the news came out last year that Scarlett Johansson was offered 10 million dollars for the role of the Major in the live action remake of GITS, the frustrated fans accused DreamWorks of "whitewashing" the classic Japanimation and turning it into a PG-13 film. While it would be premature to judge a film yet to be released, it appears timely to revisit the core achievement of Oshii's film untranslatable into the Hollywood formula. That is, unlike ultimately heteronormative and humanist sci-fi films produced in Hollywood, such as the Matrix trilogy or Cloud Atlas, GITS defies a Hollywoodization by evoking much bafflement in relation to its queer, posthuman characters and settings. This essay homes in on Major Kusanagi's body in order to update prior criticism from the perspectives of posthumanism and queer theory. If the Major's voluptuous cyborg body has been read as a liberating or as a commodified feminine body, latest critical work of posthumanism and queer theory causes us to move beyond the moralistic binaries of human/non-human and male/female. This deconstruction of binaries leads to a radical rethinking of "reality" and "identity" in an image-saturated, hypermediated age. Viewed from this perspective, Major Kusanagi's body can be better understood less as a reflection of "real" women than as an embodiment of our anxieties on the loss of self and interiority in the SNS-dominated society. As is warned by many posthumanist and queer critics, queer and posthuman components are too often used to reinforce the human. I argue that the Major's hybrid body is neither a mere amalgam of human and machine nor a superficial postmodern blurring of boundaries. Rather, the compelling combination of individuality, animality, and technology embodied in the Major redefines the human as always, already posthuman. This ethical act of revision-its shifting focus from oppressive humanism to a queer coexistence-evinces the lasting power of GITS.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.38
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• pp.1-28
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• 2015

The work appeared a featured female character in the Disney animation film begins with 'Snow White' released in 1937. After then, the 11 female characters appeared included 'Tangled' in 2010. Female characters reveal their identity due to obedient, family-oriented and marriage with prince and then gradually develop to heroine who leads to man, and is independent, pioneering, and sometimes saves the nation. Nevertheless, the ending of the Disney animation was still not escape the institutional, traditional discourse. Female characters are followed to meet the featured actor kissing and marriage, or was to show the virtues of sacrifice for the actor. However, Elsa in 'Frozen' is the character with an independent identity compared with the patriarchy, male chauvinism and heterosexual dichotomous discourse given so far in Disney. In this study, it is to explain the change of gender identity in the character of Elsa through Queer theory that deconstructs the distinction between sex and gender, and is constituted by the actions typed and performed the gender concept, and is dismantling the dichotomy itself such as male/female, heterosexual/homosexual. The performative of Queer make the boundaries between lesbian-gay, sexuality and heterosexual ambiguous. It can be said that the performative has political nature resisted to the dominant discourse through these parodiable strategy. The performative showed of Elsa is in the boundaries between the sisterhood and the heterosexual. When analyzed in a heterosexual perspective Elsa's identity is to be understood as simply just love the intimacy of a sister and a sister. On the other hand, if you focused on the relationship between women and the relationship between Elsa and Anna is recognized as the point of view of homosexuality. Because if you look at the concept of lesbian continuum, the homosexual love in the female characters of Disney seems like a bond between women, easier than heterosexual love can be hidden sexual desires. Elsa has developed into a performative identity through the expression of performative and the inhibitory of queer identity. And then the her sorcery that was initially contraindicated and the presence of a fear became to the 'lesbian phallus'. The sorcery that can be seen the signifying phallus against to the privileges of heterosexual patriarchy is recognized in the world of Arendal. Elsa is a new women featuring Disney characters. as this character is analysised by Queer theory, this study seeks to expand the area of the various character analysis methods.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.5-44
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• 2010

The main purpose of this study is to critically examine the existing theoretical as well as analytical scope of 'sexual minority' in Social Welfare, and to (re)construct and expand it incorporating feminist theories on sexuality. The body of literature on sexual minority or homosexuality in social welfare in Korea as well as in the West can be characterized as two distinct features: first, medical discourse leaning on pathological perspective which perceives homosexuality as a disease or defect, homosexual as a pervert; and second, human rights perspective premised upon the idea of diversity and multi-culturalism, both which are anchoring at 'essentialism.' Based upon the understanding of sexuality as a social construct, we argue that feminist insight on sexuality can lead to reconceptualizing homosexuality and reorienting theories and practices in social welfare. From radical feminism to postmodern queer theories, feminists have developed diverse ideas and complex theories on sexuality and homosexuality, including the concept of 'compulsory heterosexuality,' 'lesbianism as political resistance,' and 'performative gender.' For feminists, particularly, sexuality which is constructed in the complex power matrix of dominations to producing and maintaining inequalities and discriminations is not merely a distinctive variable, but one of the important organizational principles such as gender, class, race, age, and nationality. This epistemological principle will hopefully shed lights on alternative 'knowledge' on homosexuality in social welfare, and lead to significant contribution to its critical expansion in theory and practice.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.65 no.3
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• pp.47-61
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• 2015

Dress functions as a clear boundary between gender differences In the past. However dress in the 21st century, due to movement of feminism during the 1960's, advance of mass media and the influence of postmodernism, the boundary of gender differences has been blurred. Especially in men's fashion, where there was no little changes in traditional menswear, it is noteworthy that there appears some changes. The research about gender has developed to queer theory, subjected on gender itself, founded on the gender diversity. The purpose of the study is to conduct the implied meanings of dress in contemporary society, when gender diversity has been expressed in men's fashion, and to review the characteristics of contemporary men's fashion through the collections and advertisements of post 2000's as well as internet sites. This research is based on theory of Judith Butler, which is on the center of feminism and queer theory. Homosexual expressions which are presented in male clothing and advertisement produce rejection of the dichotomous view of gender concept and allowing of individual gender identity expression.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.9
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• pp.510-520
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• 2018

This study explored the phenomenon of heterosexual women embracing Boys' Love manga within the heteronormativity context from a feminist psychological perspective. Specifically, the issue of genre characteristics of Boys' Love manga, women's psychological mechanism of reading Boys' Love manga, and the functions and effects of embracing Boys' Love manga were discussed. As a theoretical framework of analysis, I started from the classical psychoanalysis and critically adopted the concepts of the various camps of feminism, queer theory, and Huizinga's Homo Rudens. The results show that Boys' Love manga can be classified as a sub-category of the romance genre, which fulfills heterosexual women's desires of eternal love and equal partnership. From these wish-fulfilling fantasies, heterosexual women attempt to be decontextualized from the heteropatriarchism, to enjoy distancing and voyeuristic separation from the characters in the texts, and to disturb the dichotomous gender system through gender reversal identification. These processes, which can be regarded as a women's play challenging sexual rigorism, ultimately bring about an awareness of the female sexual subjectivity.

• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.53
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• pp.119-159
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• 2017

The study aims to provide a strategies for managing collecting policies through an analysis of issues on it. For the purpose, it conducts literature review and theoretical studies on characteristics, roles, and importances of civil domain digital archives' collecting policies. As a case study, the study selects 4 archives, such as Queer Archives, Seotaiji Archives, iCoop Archives, and Sori Archives, and discusses basic status and elements of their collecting policies. Furthermore, it interviews 9 civil domain digital archives for analyzing their collecting policies' making processes, usages, copyrights issues, cooperation with other institutions. As a result, this article presents alternative strategies for awareness campaign, independency, essential elements of the efficient collecting policy management.

• 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.