• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.141-155
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• 2020

How might historians secure for the river a larger berth in the recent macro-historical turn? This question cannot find a greater niche than in the emerging critique of the existing spatial configuration of regionalism in mainland Southeastern Asia. The Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong and Yangtze rivers spread out like a necklace around Yunnan and cut across parts of the territories that are known as South, Southeast and East Asia. Each of these rivers has a different topography and fluvial itinerary, giving rise to different political, economic and cultural trajectories. Yet these rivers together form a connected "water-world". These rivers engendered conversations between multi-agentive mobility and large-scale place-making and were at the heart of inter-Asian engagements and integration until the formal end of the European empires. Being both a subject and a sponsor of transregional crossings, the paper argues, these rivers point to the need for a new historical approach that registers the connections between parts of the Southeast Asian massif through to the expansive plain land and the vast coastal rim of the Bay of Bengal and the China Seas. A connection that could be framed through the concept of Holon.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.157-178
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• 2010

A critique on Freud's remembering taken place in the 80's and 90s has a significant impact on a paradigm shift: from the discursive constructivism to the neo-empiricism. Along with Marx and Nietzsche, Freud was one of the main intellectual sources in formulating the Cultural Studies, known as the political corrections in the later period of Post-modern era. In the wake of feminism, there was a social happening, namely, a memory restoration, when a woman therapist helped a woman patient to restore the past and come up with her father as the cause of her trauma. Finally, 'the false memory syndrome' brought up a hot issue firing on the controversy about Freudian remembering. Freud as a clinical therapist began to be a sole target to be criticized. Strangely enough, however, Freud was continually utilized by such theorists as Julia Kristeva, Homi Bhabah, and Žižek, while having dissenters like Deleuze, Quattari, and Butler. Of those intellectual claims, this paper focuses on the debates by the dissenters not from the discursive theorists but from the clinical studies: Sulloway, Grunbaum, and Crews. My argument directs to the empirical side of Freud for the conclusion that the dispute on him was a seed of a paradigm shift towards the neo-empiricism, after one century's flourishing of constructivism.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.1215-1233
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• 2012

This essay is an attempt to critique the notion of hybridity that has so far facilitated a liberal multiculturalist reading of White Teeth. For an alternative framework, it posits the multiethnic subject-making to examine in what ways the novel questions the premises of liberal multiculturalism. In this vein, this study suggests that Smith throws some significant light on the underside of holding multiple racial/ethnic identities while not bypassing its utopian possibilities. In case of the first-generation male characters, their crossracial/homosocial friendship becomes a platform for a mode of egalitarian belonging across the racial divide. It further implies a symbolic union between working-class white and nonwhite immigrant. The younger generation, in contrast, undergoes problems of racial, ethnic, cultural affiliations in far more complicated ways than the older one. Above all, White Teeth demonstrates the subtle workings of liberal multiculturalism, within which the younger characters are constructed to be a multiethnic subject in varied modes. It delineates the formation mainly by exploring the persisting legacies of Britain's imperial history that partake in their subject-making. The novel, in doing so, obliquely suggests that the younger generation is to confront the past that is a seminal part of their present life rather than have the freedom to throw it away to be a carefree member of a multicultural society.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.16
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• pp.71-103
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• 2013

This paper explores the key figure of minjung misul ("the people's art"), Kim Bongjun, and the art collective Dureong in the relationship between 'dialogue' and the dissidents' structural critique of Korea's modernities. During the 1980s' prodemocracy movement, the minjung artists and other dissident intellectuals used the notion of dialogue as metaphor for and allegory of democracy to articulate not only Koreans' experience of modern history, which they saw as "alienating" and "inhumane," but also the discrepancies between Koreans' predicaments and their political aspirations and their working toward the fulfillment of those ideals. Envisioning alternative forms of modernities, Kim Bongjun and other Dureong members paid attention to the fundamental elements of art, which consist of art as a modern institution, as well as the everyday lives of people as the very site of Koreans' modernities. They endeavored to create "art of life," which presumes its being part of people's lives, based on the cultural and spiritual traditions of the agrarian community. They also participated in the national culture movement, the minjung church, and the alternative-life movement to radically envision everyday lives through the indigenous reinterpretation of democratic values. Despite the significant role played by the church mission and its community involvement, its effects on minjung misul have received little attention in the relevant studies. Thus, I consider in particular the minjung church's and the alternative-life movement's confluence of multiple cultural and social constituencies in relation to Kim and the Dureong collective's vision of a new art and community.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.137-146
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• 2013

The vague anxiety or disbelief about new media undermines the confidence of old media about controlling the future. The negative response of old media makes the vicious circle. In spite of the development of new media and IT industry, the conservative view regards computer game as taboo. The absolute taboo provokes the absolute fear. Then the absolute taboo is 'computer game' in today's Korean society. Computer game as play in the digital era is burdened by the critique on the non-productivity and the deviation. And what's more, the digital technology of computer game intensifies the image of 'virtuality'. It cause the fear about computer game. This article starts on the understanding about computer game and inspects the mass image about computer game which is caused by the various aspects of cultural or technological facts in computer game. From this inspection, the article explains the mechanism of gamephobia and suggests the view to catch the cultural value of computer game beyond the fear.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.111-139
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• 2016

Plato's philosophical importance in western thinking history cannot be understated. Especially his dichotomy system became common to the European traditions of philosophical and scientific discourses by assigning principal value to the presence that is opposed to the absence. Since the ancient Greeks, the concept of presence has been expressed itself in number of ways such as God, Truth, Logos, and center. Derrida called this European thinking "the metaphysics of presence." In order to analyze logocentrism also called the metaphysics of presence in No Telephone to Heaven, I used the term, paralogy that Aristotle did not accept as rules of argumentation but that Lyotard revived it positively as the principle of reason. Lyotard's incredulity towards rationalist theory of modernism is that knowledge can never be certain. Without any ultimate validity, certainty is impossible. Nevertheless, as Fanon said, the colonial world is dominated with a traditional Manichaean world. As a result what remains to the colonized to establish their identities is that of an armed struggle towards the colonizer even though they know it results in the vicious circle of hatred endlessly. Cliff attempted to show this message in her text through the tragic heroine, Clare Savage. Cliff's another critique of modernism's rationalism is shown through the ambiguous sexuality of Harry/Harriot. In this novel, gender plays also a central role by questioning the traditional binary system of sexuality. In this paper, I deconstructed this traditional gender system in terms of Bulter's concept of performitivity. This study will give the text another layer of deconstructive interpretation echoing with the proverb, one tree cannot make a forest.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.29-61
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• 2017

Said's Orientalism criticized the European representations on the Middle-East by theorizing orientalism as a discourse. In this text, he explored and criticized the colonial forms of knowledge and language that distorted the image of the colonized. The justification of the discourse of orientalism is derived from the binary system that is originated from Plato which Derrida rejects on the ground that it always privileges one term over the other, that is, colonizer over colonized. Derrida names for this traditional heritage of Western binary system logocentrism which regards logos(the Greek term for speech or reason) as the central principle of language and philosophy, whereas mythos derives its meaning from the logos on the basis of binary oppositions. Thus according to logocentrism, the colonized is merely the defined who can have its meaning from the definers, colonizers. In this paper, utilizing Derrida's a (non)concept called supplement which means both to add on as a surplus and to make up something missing as a mere extra, I propose another alternative interpretation towards the critique of colonial representation by raising internal contradictions in the Platonic dichotomy between logos and mythos embedded in western colonialism discourse, orientalism. I attempt to show that logos(colonizer) and mythos(colonized) is inseparable in itself due to the fact that they exist as supplementary. For this purpose, I demonstrate how colonial binary system constituted and was constituted in terms of language. Through this paper I reinterpret the colonial rationality of privileging 'logos' over 'mythos' by substituting the colonial binary system with the supplement.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.39-80
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• 2024

Guided by the prism of cultural studies, this paper takes a look at the Manila Korea Town in Malate, Manila. The location, Manila Korea Town, figures as the paper's object of study by exploring, theorizing, and reflecting on its presence and location within the horizon of the signifying powers of Korea-Philippine relations in the contemporary period. With the subject position of this essay, the paper theorizes by responding to the following questions: How does the meaning-making of South Korea fare with other Koreatowns in the world from the scale of Koreatown in Manila? Subsequently, what happens to a place when a global cultural phenomenon evolves into a form of placemaking in a different nation and territory? As Koreatown finally grounds itself in the anarchic lifeworld of Manila, what does this historical development in our urban lives reveal about our contemporary times? Responding to this set of questions led this paper to foreground the idea of a modular imagined community within a four-part discussion. The body of the essay begins by theorizing on the concept that this paper proposes, modular imagined community, and such a concept work draws from the theories of nationalism by Benedict Anderson and Partha Chatterjee. Subsequently, the antinomy between Anderson and Chatterjee is pursued by looking at the history of such a place, and through this step, the paper unravels the character of the place of Manila Korea Town, which explains the conditions of possibility of such social and communitarian formation. Yet as the public is caught by the presence of such development especially at the heart of Manila, the paper expands the scale and viewpoint by shining light on the globality of South Korea in relation to the Philippines. Lastly, this paper closes with a discussion on the food culture facilitated by this recent development, which also pushes us to imagine its potential, especially in light of the critique raised against South Korea and the popular culture associated with this phenomenon.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.40
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• pp.261-285
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• 2015

Transmedia has become a significant theme in the media studies sector and an academic discourse itself since its wide diffusion through Henry Jenkins' seminar book Convergence Culture. The aim of this essay is to examine the authentic intention of the proposer to understand its profound meaning and value in the research discourse. Firstly, Transmedia has originated as a part of the convergence culture research context, which is an identical approach in the 'active audience' research tradition. Thus, a history of the research in terms of Birmingham Cultural Studies tradition and its implication is scrutinized. Secondly, in respect of Pierre Levy's 'collective intelligence' which made significant influence on the making of the Convergence Culture and Transmedia Storytelling, the meaing of the transmedia discourse is studied. Thirdly and finally, the implication of this concept as a critical theory or Critique in the Cultural Studies tradition, which has highlighted the importance of the revelation of the binary oppositions and structures of dominance/resistance, with the interpretation of the role of the collective intelligence idea in the transmedia discourse, is studied.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.498-513
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• 2010

This paper aims to critically discuss the place-marketing strategy that has been widely seen as an alternative way of regional development for the last decade in South Korea. In particular, it argues that the place-marketing strategy is highly likely to intensify the inter-local or inter-urban completion and to result in the territorialization of places because it is based on the essentialist notion of place that has been suggested by the humanistic geographers. In order to logically support my argument, I will critically review the essentialist notion of place, and introduce an alternative notion of place, in which the place is seen as socially constructed through complicated power relations and social, political and cultural processes. Also, I will logically demonstrate that the place-marketing can be seen as a strategy for territorializing places by discussing how territory is socially and politically constructed as a particular form of place.