• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.625-649
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• 2011

Even though "An Outpost of Progress" and Heart of Darkness were based upon Joseph Conrad the sailor's same experience in Congo Free State, their narrative strategies are quite different. The realistic representation of "An Outpost of Progress," with which Conrad was not satisfied at all, was converted into the modernistic narrative strategy of Heart of Darkness so that the sympathetic power of the story should be improved. The conservative value system of realism is expressed by the omniscient author in "An Outpost of Progress," whereas the frame narrator of Heart of Darkness is proved to be an unreliable one whose norms and behavior are not in accordance with the implied author. The glorious history of the British Empire, which was proudly presented by the frame narrator at the beginning of Heart of Darkness, was strongly opposed by Marlow, another narrator, who said that the British Empire had been "one of the dark places of the earth" when ruled by the Roman Empire. The feeling of the frame narrator was uneasily changed into the gloomy mood when he described the Thames as the flow which "seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness" at the end of Heart of Darkness. Similar to the straightforward narrative strategy of representation in "An Outpost of Progress," the realistic approach of Part I in Heart of Darkness is considered by Conrad as insufficient to reveal the darkest truth of imperialism, which was declared by Kurtz as "The Horror! The Horror!" Thus Conrad uses the Chinese-box structure, in which Kurtz' episode is enveloped by Marlow's tale which is enclosed by the frame narrator's story, in order to penetrate into the mind of ordinary readers in the novelist's age of New Colonialism, while attacking the ideology itself of imperialism instead of critisizing its inefficiency and individualism.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.865-883
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• 2009

The mock-heroic, "the single most characteristic and individual literary form of the neoclassical era," as Brean Hammond puts it, epitomizes the process of the "novelization" of the 18th-century British culture. Bakhtin mentions that when the novel reigns supreme, almost all the remaining genres are "novelized"; Hammond borrows the term "novelization" from Bakhtin and uses it as a "shorthand way of referring to the cultural forces that render epic anachronistic." Indebted to Hammond's apprehension of novelization, this paper reads Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock in the context of novelization, particularly focusing on 'probability,' 'contemporaneity' and 'domesticity,' three important signatures of the novelization of the 18th-century British culture. First, Sylph as a counterpart of god in epic is presented in The Rape of the Lock just as a helpless, fictional and irrelevant thing that hardly affects the empirical world. It indicates how the mock-epic 'mocks' the classical world of 'epic' and stands closer to the world of the novel. Second, Pope's poem displays an accurate picture of the author's contemporary reality, a capital concern of the novel, such as imperialism, consumer society, commodity fetishism, or reification. Lastly, The Rape of the Lock lays out the construction of modern gender ideology, another quintessential interest of the novel, particularly with the fixed female image of a coquette. It efficiently silences and nullifies Belinda, a typical coquette, who stands as a threatening force to the ascendent domestic ideology.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.239-272
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• 2009

Our investigation of the intricate relationship among nationalism, humanism, and imperialism begins from reading Song of Ariran, the auto/biography of Kim San recorded by Nym Wales, together with Margaret Drabble's fictional adaptation of Lady Hong's autobiography, The Memoirs of Lady $Hyegy{\breve{o}}ng$, in her novel The Red Queen, in which the story of Barbara Halliwell, a modern female envoy of Lady Hong, is interweaved with Lady Hong's narrative. In spite of their being seemingly disparate texts, Song of Ariran and The Red Queen are comparable: they are written by Western female writers who deal with Koreans, along with the Korean history and culture. Accordingly, both works cut across the boundary of fiction and fact, imagination and history, and the East and the West. In the age of globalization, Western women writing (about) Korea and Koreans traversing the historical and cultural limits inevitably engage us in post-colonial discussions. Despite the temporal differences--If Song of Ariran handles with the historical turmoils of the 1930s Asia, mostly surrounding Kim San's activities as a nationalist, The Red Queen is written by a twenty-first century British woman writer whose international interest grapples with the eighteenth-century Korean Crown Princess' spirit in order to reinscribe a story of Korean woman's within the contemporary culture--, both works appeal to the humanistic perspective, advocating the universal human beings' values transcending the historical and national limitations. While this sort of humanistic approach can provide sympathy transcending time and space, this 'idealistic' process can be problematic because the Western writers's appropriation of Korean culture and its history can easily reduce its particularities to comprehensive generalization, without giving proper names to the Korean history and culture. Nonetheless, the Western female writers' attempt to find a place of 'contact' is valuable since it opens a possibility of having meaningful communications between minor culture and dominating culture. Yet, these female writers do not seem to absolutely cross the border of race, gender, and culture, which leaves us to realize how difficult it is to reach a genuine understanding with what is different from mine even in these 'universal' narratives.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.28
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• pp.5-16
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• 2012

First published in 1934, George Orwell's Burmese Days, which can be read as an example of both descriptive realism and fictional realism, is considered to be a colonial example of British literature because of its publication date. However, based on the personal experience of the author as an imperial officer in Burma, the novel has an anti-imperialist tone, which can also make it possible to read it through postcolonial eyes. As a result, the novel stands as an example of ambivalence since it has both the colonial and the postcolonial perspective; both the colonizer and the colonized are portrayed with their own flaws, adding to the impact of what can be called "Third Space." This is why the voice of the imperial is heard in an anti-imperialist tone in Burmese Days, through which Orwell presents a critique of colonialism with a from-within approach.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.421-435
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• 2006

This study considered the history and range of concern to the citizenship education in the British geography education with respect to the appearance of the citizenship subject in National Curriculum. Although British geography education mainly put on emphasis citizenship education focused on national identity through imperialism ideology up to World War II, it has aimed at the local and global citizenship education which put focus on the reflection of students to individual value and value position, and social justice after the 1980s. Not only an inner change of such geography education but the external factor of appearance of citizenship subject has stimulated more concern about citizenship education. After that, British geography education community constructs the logic of theoretical justification and urges teachers' practical research and continuous concern as plan for geography subject to lead citizenship education all the time. On the other hand, recently British political and social cultural geographers observe spaces of the citizenship which makes difference and identity and the radical and critical citizenship which put focus on the local and the global scale from the national. Therefore, citizenship education through geography subject must put more emphasis on not national identity but the local and global identity for social justice and a better world.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.117-148
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• 2022

The full impact of COVID-19 has yet to be felt: while it may not define the new decade, it is clear that its immediate significance was to test many of the basic operating assumptions and procedures of global civilization. Even as vaccines are developed and utilized and even as it is possible to see the beginning of the end of COVID-19 as a discrete historical event, it remains unclear as to its ultimate importance. That said, it is evident that the academic exploration of Southeast Asia will also be affected by both the global and regional experiences of the pandemic. "Breakthroughs of Area Studies and ASEAN in the Era of Homo Untact" promises to help reconceptualize the study of the region by highlighting the importance of redefined spatial relationships and new potentially depersonalized modes of communication. This paper acknowledges these issues by suggesting that the transformations caused by the pandemic should motivate scholars to raise new questions about how to understand humanity-particularly as it is defined by societies, nations and regions. Given that COVID-19 (and the response to it) has altered many of the fundamental rhythms of globalized regions, there is sufficient warrant for re-examining both the ways in which disease, health and their related spaces affect the perceptions of Southeast Asia. To achieve "breakthroughs" into the investigation of the region, it makes sense to have another glance at the ways in which the discourses about diseases and health may have helped to inscribe definitions of Southeast Asia-or, at the very least, the nations, societies and peoples who live within it. In order to at least consider these larger issues, the discussion will concentrate on a formative moment in the conceptualization of Southeast Asia-British engagement with the region in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. To that end three themes will be highlighted: (1) the role that British diplomatic and military narratives played in establishing the information priorities required for the construction of colonial knowledge; (2) the importance not only of "colonial knowledge" but information making in its own right; (3) in anticipation of the use of big data, the manner in which manufactured information (related to space and disease) could function in shaping early British perceptions of Southeast Asia-particularly in Batavia and Java. This discussion will suggest that rather than see social distancing or increased communication as the greatest outcome of COVID-19, instead it will be the use of data-that is, big, aggregated biometric data which have not only shaped responses to the pandemic, but remain likely to produce the reconceptualization of both information and knowledge about the region in a way that will be at least as great as that which took place to meet the needs of the "New Imperialism." Furthermore, the definition and articulation of Southeast Asia has often reflected political and security considerations. Yet, the experience of COVID-19 could prove that data and security are now fused into a set of interests critical to policy-makers. Given that the pandemic should accelerate many existing trends, it might be foreseen these developments will herald the triumph of homo indicina: an epistemic condition whereby the human subject has become a kind of index for its harvestable data. If so, the "breakthroughs" for those who study Southeast Asia will follow in due course.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.27-56
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• 2015

How should we conceptualize regions? What is the context in which new approaches to regional study take place? What is the role of historical change in the reconceptualization of regions or areas? This article addresses this issue by using two case studies to shed light on the history of regional study by comparing some of the ways in which the Middle East and Southeast Asia have been conceptualized. Accordingly, the discussion traces the ways in which these areas were understood in the 19th century by highlighting the ideas of a number of influential Victorian thinkers. The Victorians are useful because not only did British thinkers play critical roles in the shaping of modern patterns of knowledge, but their empire was global in scope, encompassing parts of both Southeast Asia and the Middle East. However, the Victorians regarded these places quite differently: Southeast Asia was frequently described as "Further India" and the Middle East was the home of the Ottoman Empire. Both of these places were at least partly understood in relation to the needs of British policy-makers, who tended to focus most of their efforts according to the needs of India-which was their most important colonial possession. The article exhibits the connections between the "Eastern Question" and end of the Ottoman Empire (and the political developments which followed) led to the creation of the concept of "Middle East". With respect to Southeast Asia, attention will be devoted to the works of Alfred Russell Wallace, Hugh Clifford, and others to see how "further India" was understood in the 19th century. In addition, it is clear that the successful deployment of the term "Southeast Asia" reflected the political needs of policy makers in wake of decolonization and the Cold War. Finally, by showing the constructive nature of regions, the article suggests one possible new path for students of Southeast Asia. If the characterization of the region is marked by arbitrary factors, it may actually point to a useful avenue of enquiry, a hermeneutic of expedience. Emphasis on the adaptive and integrative features of lived realities in Southeast Asia may well be a step beyond both the agendas of "colonial knowledge" and anti-colonial nationalism.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.167-186
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• 2006

We live in a global village that requires a language with a genuinely global status as a means of communication. During the twentieth century, English has clearly emerged as the lingua franca owing to both past British political imperialism and the more recent superpower status of the United States. Further contributing to world domination of the English language is the fact that the computer and Internet sprang from the US. Whether you like it or not, you are destined to learn English at least to some extent in order to live in this global village. For the last two decades, one of the most mistaken ideas a number of Korean English teachers have had is that speaking and listening are the primary forms of language, while reading and writing are secondary. In fact, reading is regarded as a skill of much consequence to us since it provides us with access to a huge quantity of information on the Internet, of which at least 80% is written in English. Writing, too, deserves a great deal of attention because we are increasingly called upon to use standard English expressions. As diligent learners of English, we had better not forget the place accorded to language not only as a medium for exchange and constructing information but as a tool for thinking. So we should try to think in English to the point where we have thinking-in-English as a habit, thereby leading to increased familiarity with the language. Such familiarity entails, above all, possessing a command of English.

• The Southeast Asian review
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.127-165
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• 2014

This article regards the phase of political confrontations in Thailand and Burma as a prolonged and inconclusive political struggle between national revolution forces and civil revolution forces. It argues that in Thai case, anti-monarchy constitutional revolution has led to a right-wing national revolution based on state nationalism consolidating capitalist economic system by Sarit's military coup, while in Burmese case, anti-British imperialism movement in colonial era has resulted in a left-wing national revolution grounded on state nationalism associating with socialist economic system by Ne Win's military coup. It is also interesting to note that the two cases experienced state nationalism denying autonomous civil society as a process of nation-building in spite of their contrasting ideologies. In both cases, it became inevitable to have national revolution forces clinging to official nationalism and state nationalism confronting with civil revolution forces seeking popular nationalism and liberal nationalism. In particular, unlike Burmese society, Thai society, without colonial history has never experienced a civil war mobilizing anti-colonial popular nationalism including ethnic revolt. This article considers Dankwart Rustow's argument that national unity as a background condition must precede all the other phases of democratization, but that otherwise its timing is irrelevant. In this context, Thai democratization without national unity which began earlier than Burmese is taking a backward step. For the time being, there would be no solution map to overcome severe political polarization between the right-wing national revolution forces defending official nationalism cum state nationalism and the civil revolution forces trying to go beyond official nationalism towards popular nationalism cum liberal nationalism. In contrast, paradoxically belated Burmese democratization has just taken a big leap in escaping from serious and inconclusive nature of political struggle between the left-wing national revolution forces to defend official nationalism cum state nationalism and civil revolution based on popular nationalism cum liberal nationalism towards a reconciliation phase in order to seek solutions for internal conflicts. The two case studies imply that national unity is not a background condition, but a consequence of the process of political polarization and reconciliation between national revolution forces and civil revolution forces.