• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.23-48
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• 2014

Considered as the first generation of the Chinese American male writers, Shawn Wong has often been tagged with the male-centered or cultural nationalistic writer for his first short novel Homebase since the 1970s. He has, however, shifted his own gender and cultural attitudes toward his male character in his second novel American Knees, published in 1995. By focusing on his second novel, this paper examines how Wong critically reconsiders the male-centeredness and cultural nationalism in a way to invalidate them in relationships among male and female characters in the formation of the Chinese American male's identity. Attempting to establish his own national and cultural identity as an American citizenship and the self-awareness of masculinity as a man, Rainsford Chan in Homebase believed that he could achieve his identity and masculinity with the chronological experiences related to his ancestors in American society. He even strictly erased the presence of female in his own identity formation. In doing so, he seemed to anchor his authorship at the discourse of the male-centeredness and cultural nationalist like other contemporary writers such as Frank Chin and Jeffrey Paul Chan who always strongly marked cultural tradition. By creating a non-conventional male character Raymond Ding with compromising and open-eared attitudes toward female characters, however, Wong dramatically changes the idea of representing the relationships between male and female characters in American Knees. In this novel, he suggests that the male character' identity can be properly formed not in the extreme reinforcement of masculinity or the ethnic-based cultural awareness but with the mutual understanding between male and female individuals regardless of ethnic and nationalistic biases. Consequently, Wong attempts to bail out of the male-centered images of the first generation of the Chinese American male writers through Raymond Ding.

• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.15
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• pp.51-79
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• 2013

This paper examines the characteristics of post-modern self-portrait photography. Characteristics of postmodernism associated with the "loss of centeredness," such as the death of the author, interdisciplinarity, and intertextuality, brought about a number of changes within the self-portrait. The distinction between post-modern and modern self-portraiture can be characterized by the following qualities: appropriation, the use of photography, and the utilization of the human body as an art. The characteristics of post-modern self-portrait photography can be represented through the works of Cindy Sherman, Orlan, and Morimura Yasumasa. By presenting prototypical women in her works, Cindy Sherman not only represents images of those women, but also exposes her fictitious role in the work. She creates a distance between herself in the works and herself in reality and discloses a paternalistic gaze. Meanwhile, Orlan transforms her face into a distorted image and presents it as an alternative identity that is representative of postmodernism. She corrodes the standard concept of identity through plastic surgery and treats the face not as a place where the identity stays, but as a simple body part or fragment of skin. Orlan's post-human face is malleable according to the artist's desire to raise the issue of what the human face is, and opposes the structure of modernism. Morimura Yasumasa also appropriates images from masterpieces and presents a hybrid identity between Eastern and Western, male and female, original and replica, and subject and object. In order to dissect social prejudice, he puts forth every single structural dichotomy that coexists in his self-portrait and suppresses a strong ego. He also studies the relationship between 'seeing' and being 'seen' by trading the painter's role from that of the subject to that of the object.

• Women's Studies Review
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.145-183
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• 2010

This study has compared South Korea with Taiwan, a society which has an almost non-hierarchical college culture in spite of its social and historical similarities to Korea, including the recruit system. By the means of quantitative and qualitative comparative studies and analysis, it has tried to clarify the reasons behind the hierarchical and sexist military culture of Korean universities. According to the comparative studies, Taiwan's college culture is less hierarchical than that of South Korea, and support for the necessity of hierarchy is weaker. Hierarchy had a greater influence on the payment of meals, appellations and society admissions in South Korea. Elements of military culture such as violence or group discipline were usually only present in South Korean college culture. Male-centered drinking and prostitution culture was also found to be stronger in South Korea. The historical and social reason for these differences is that Taiwan has a weaker basis for nationalism and militarism, both essential factors in the founding of hierarchical and collective culture. The most direct reason for the lack of hierarchy in Taiwanese college culture is the period of recruitment. In South Korea, young men usually apply for military service during the first or second year or college, and return to school as second or third-year studies. In Taiwan, however, men are usually recruited after having graduated from college. Students who have served in the army have proved to have a significant influence on violence, hierarchy and drinking culture in Korea's college culture. South Korea's college culture has two main problems. The first is that South Korean college students are not able to be critical towards the harms of South Korea's oppressively hierarchical collective culture, and therefore do not develop the strength to fight against it. This is all the more problematic because they are the future components of South Korea's main institutions. The second is that it roots male-centeredness even further into the South Korean mentality.