• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.41-77
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• 2021

It has been 20 years since the gender quota system for expanding women's political representation was enacted. However, the proportion of Korean women's representatives has not exceeded 20 percent. This study examines how the gender quota system, public funding for women candidates, and public funding for women's development, which are the three pillars of the legal system to expand women's representation, have changed systematically over the past 20 years, how they affected women's representation, and what institutional limitations they have. In addition, it explores the im/possible conditions of reforms for expanding women's representation. To reform the legal system for women's representation, it is necessary to understand that Korea's political system is arranged in a gender-based way in a male-dominated structure, while also understanding that the existence of critical actors and mass driving reforms for gender equality in politics is essential.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.975-999
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• 2012

This paper interrogates what a new point Schmitt shows concerning the problem of sovereignty in Hamlet or Hecuba in comparison with his Political Theology. Schmitt reveals his political stand on sovereignty through ‘political representation’ that connects the politics to the aesthetics in Hamlet or Hecuba since Hamlet is above all aesthetic work as play. He stresses the determining effect of political reality over the play as he links the story of Hamlet to the tragic family of James I and the religious conflicts of the Stuart dynasty. This leads to, on the one hand, supporting the myth of absolute sovereignty by elevating Hamlet to the transcendental and the exceptional status of sovereign. However, Schmitt’s intent over the absolute sovereignty is, on the other hand, demolished with the two shadows that he scrutinized through the couple of Hamlet and James I: first, the suspect that Gertrude(Mary Stuart) was involved in the murder of Hamlet(James I)’s father, and second, the century’s conflicts with religious reformation and civil war. The perils of sovereignty are manifested not only in these two, “the taboo of the Queen,” and “the Hamletization of the avenger.” It is most of all evidenced in Hamlet itself that subverts the unconditional sovereignty consistently. Hamlet’s selfreflective remarks likening the king to the beggar and the reality of Denmark succession prove that Hamlet’s political discourse is totally different from the politics that accentuates the divine sovereignty.

• American Studies
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.79-107
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• 2019

This article explores the photographic work of North American artist Jeff Wall. While his photographic work has been much discussed in terms of aesthetics and composition highlighting his methodological appropriation of modernist painters such as Eduard Manet and Piet Mondrian, the political aspect of his work remains to be investigated. This article especially unpacks the complicated dialectical relationship between the formal aesthetics and the political nature of his works by visiting his photographic work in the context of contemporary debates on the contradiction and conflicts between aesthetics and politics in photographic form. Ultimately, this article argues that Wall's photograph acquires its political meaning by problematizing the reified social representation of the other in a way in which the materiality and/or otherness of the photographic object is registered within the photographic frame and by representing the violence of the social representation and the un-representability of the object/other.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.64 no.4
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• pp.601-616
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• 2018

This article explores the ways Charles Dickens's roles as novelist and journal editor overlapped and influenced one another in the serial publication of A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and complicates recent historicist readings, which situate the novel in relation to the Indian Mutiny (1857-59), by calling attention to a double imperial logic used to construct British subjectivity not only against forms of Eastern Otherness but, moreover, against forms of Southern Otherness associated with the European South, especially Italy. Analyzing Dickens's historical representation of the French Revolution in relation to its contemporary international political context, this essay examines how the novel's serial publication draws upon political discourse from contemporary articles on the Second Italian War of Independence (1859-61) appearing concurrently in Dickens's journal, All the Year Round. Orientalism circulates simultaneously in the novel as a distant and exotic as well as a provincial and parochial representation of racial and cultural Otherness.

• English & American cultural studies
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.99-125
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• 2010

This paper explores the political significance of a literary work, the hidden side beneath the ideology of founding America in Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok which reconstructs the history of the colonial period. The ideological strategy of founding America on racial discrimination is given a repeated representation in 19th-century American novels. Most works shed a negative light on Native Americans, whereas Hobomok stands out by presenting a positive picture of a miscegenation between a Native American man and a white woman, the acculturation of a half Indian into the white society. Furthermore, Child undoes distorted stereotypes about native Americans, exposing the Puritans' intolerant and exclusive attitudes and criticizing men who forced women to be obedient for the cause of nation and religion. However, Child also shows that she could not be free from the ideology of founding America which insisted on the superiority of the white's racial identity and excluded the Native Americans as beings who were destined to vanish gradually but eventually. Although Hobomok revises stereotypical representation of Native Americans as the other, it also serves for a political purpose, showing a politically inseparable relationship between literary works and the ideology of founding America.

• Analyses & Alternatives
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.2-12
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• 2017

Research on democratic transitions has relatively ignored the question of why some countries experience a regressive form of political pacts, while others do not. This paper develops a simple game-theoretic model to explain the phenomenon of collusive pacts in the process of democratization. Trasformismo is a term that refers to a system of political exchange based on informal clientelistic politics. The existing studies of the politics of trasformismo have emphasized the timing of industrialization and the tradition of strong state as conditions of the politics of trasformismo. However, not every late industrializers and not every strong states experienced some variants of collusive political pacts in their trajectories of democratization. In this paper, I contend that the politics of trasformismo is rather a generalizable pattern of political elites' behavior under particular circumstances. By developing a simple game theoretic model, this paper suggests the conditions under which political actors are likely to collude to a regressive form of political pacts. The model shows that the likelihood of collusion to a regressive form of political pacts is a function of a set of parameters. First, a higher level of incumbency advantage in electoral competition is likely to be associated with a higher probability of collusive political pacts. Second, a higher degree of the monopoly of political representation of political parties without a close link with a variety of societal forces is likely to induce collusive behavior among politicians. Third, the ruling party leader's expectations about the likelihood of a safe extrication are related to collusive political pacts. This paper then engages in a case study of the 1990 three-party merger in South Korea. The 1990 Korean case is interesting in that the ruling party created a new party after having merged with two opposition parties. This case can be considered a result of political maneuver in a context of democratization. The case study suggests the empirical relevance of the game-theoretic model. As the game of trasformismo and the case study of the 1990 three-party merger in South Korea have shown, the collusive political pact was neither determined by a certain stage of economic development nor by a particular cultural systems. Rather, it was a product of the art of trasformismo based on party leaders' rational calculations of the expected likelihood of taking governing power.

• The International Journal of Costume Culture
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.12-22
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• 2010

As an influential political leader, Queen Elizabeth II holds the link between past queens and today's women political leaders and her dress represents so much in accordance to her role. It is important to analyze the dress and role enactment of Queen Elizabeth II in order to provide a guide to the future women political leaders all over the world. The Queen's dress helps her show tradition which has developed over one thousand years of history. She represents Britain to the world focusing on national identity and unity. The Queen always distinct herself from the rest of the world to show the pride of British Monarch, but when she is visiting other counties for diplomatic relationships she would surely show a friendly gesture on her dress to assimilate herself with that country. Also, same as all other women, the Queen seeks practicality in her dress. Therefore, I was able to classify the Queen's dress into jive groups as a way of role enactment. They are tradition, representation, distinction, assimilation, and practicality.

• Informatization Policy
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.81-95
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• 2019

This study explores how the advanced data analysis capabilities of intelligent information technology are being utilized in politics. In particular, we focus on the fact that voter behavioral targeting in election campaigns comes into conflict with the democratic process in various ways. For this purpose, this study examines political micro-targeting and political bots. It is aimed at showing that these technology-based campaign techniques work as a factor preventing free expression of opinions and discussions, which are the core of democracy itself. Then we identify the attributes of the algorithm that affects them. As a result, this study suggests that the following issues might arise regarding intelligent information technology-based politics and democracy. First, inequality in political participation becomes more severe. Second, the public debate between voters gets more difficult. Third, superficial politics is prevalent. Fourth, single-issue politics and the exclusion of political representation is likely to increase. Fifth, political privacy might also be invaded. Based on our discussions, this study concludes that it is our role to find ways by which intelligent information technology and democracy can coexist.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.217-235
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• 2011

On recognizing the significance of Walter Benjamin's "The Task of a Translator" in recent discourses of postcolonial cultural translation, this essay examines the creative postcolonialist appropriations of Benjamin's theory of translation and their political implications. In an effort to dismantle the imperialist political hierarchy between the West and the non-West, modernity and its "primitive" others, which has been the operative premise of the traditional translation studies and anthropology, newly emergent discourses of cultural translation actively adopts Benjamin's notion of translation that does not prioritize the original text's claim on authenticity. Benjamin theorizes each text-translation as well as the original-as an incomplete representation of the pure language. Eschewing formalistic views propounded by deconstructionist critics like Paul de Man, who tend to regard Benjamin's notion of the untranslatable purely in terms of the failure inherent in the language system per se, such postcolonialist critics as Tejaswini Niranjana, Rey Chow, and Homi Bhabha, each in his/her unique way, recuperate the significatory potential of historicity embedded in Benjamin's text. Their further appropriation of the concept of the "untranslatable" depends on a radically political turn that, instead of focusing on the failure of translation, salvages historical as well as cultural potentiality that lies between disparate cultural entities, signifying differences, or disjunctures, that do not easily render themselves to existing systems of representation. It may therefore be concluded that postcolonial discourses on cultural translation of Niranhana, Chow, and Bhabha, inspired by Benjamin, each translate the latter's theory into highly politicized understandings of translation, and this leads to an extensive rethinking of the act of translation itself to include all forms of cultural exchange and communicative activities between cultures. The disjunctures between these discourses and Benjamin's text, in that sense, enable them to form a sort of theoretical constellation, which aspires to an impossible yet necessary utopian ideal of critical thinking.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.45
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• pp.187-219
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• 2009

Under the pressure of the selection of topics and the presentation rules of mass media, politics in media society increasingly resort to professionalized forms of theatrical staging as a means of self-portrayal. Although these staging methods are not contradictory to what is actually going on in politics, they strongly advantage the tendency to focus exclusively on the staging of an event. Through their competition for public attention, politicians have been developing sophistication regarding placement and staging of events as well as regarding factual information. In the process of this transformation, politics that are issue-related and based on binding decisions are being gradually transformed into symbolic politics. Moreover, through their appearance on TV, politicians first of all need to possess presentational skills which are not necessarily related to their political achievements. Still, presentational skills decide over the success in politics of those politicians. The reason is that a politician who possesses presentational skills is still being perceived as being successful even if his political achievements notedly lag behind. On the other hand, political achievements are being underrated if a politician lacks the talent to present himself in front of the media. “The staging of politics, “politainment”, on the stage of mass media is evolving into a key structure which is responsible for a new coinage of politics in all different kinds of dimensions: the selection of staff, the role of action programs and their impact for the legitimation of political acting, even in relation to therole of pivotal political institutions such as parties and parliaments in the political process. The TV debates during the Bundestag elections of the year 2002 and 2005 are being analyzed and judged as “staging of politics”(politainment). Self-dramatization in media society concerning media discourses about politics and political self-portrayal has become a basic principle of political communication. Self-dramatization is a vital challenge for adequate political communication and content-based orientation in our present media democracies.