• 인문언어
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• 제2권2호
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• pp.223-265
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• 2002

In United States black mothers have consistently been treated as national outsiders, as women whose children, although ostensibly entitled to full citizenship, are in practice rarely provided with equal protection within the nation′s borders or under its laws. From the time he began writing in the aftermath of the failures of national Reconstruction, the African American public intellectual and political activist W. E. B. Du Bois realized that a truly effective anti-racist politics would also have to contend with the particular ways in which U.S. racism targeted black mothers. In short, he understood that an effective anti-racism would necessarily have to be a form of anti-sexism. This article examines the myriad ways in which Du Bois attempted to reconstruct the relationship between race and reproduction in the interest of producing anti-racist, anti-nationalist, as well as internationalist thinking. In so doing it treats the various representations of black maternity and child birth that Du Bois created, and elaborates on the rhetorical and political function of these representations in combating the racialization of national belonging on the one hand, and in articulating universal black citizenship, or what this article theorizes as racial globality on the other. The article begins by considering Du Bois′s attempts to transcend ideas about the racialized reproductive body as a source of national belonging within the United States, particularly his efforts to contest the idea of the reconstructing nation as a white nation reproduced exclusively by white women. Through analysis of Du Bois′s depiction of the birth and death of his son in his monumental work The Souls of Black Folk (1903) it demonstrates his reluctance to build an anti-racist politics founded on the idea that belonging within the nation is something that can be bestowed by one′s mother. The article proceeds by turning to Du Bois less well-known romantic novel, Dark Princess (1928) in which, by contrast, he depicts the birth of a "golden chi1d" who belongs not only within the United States, but within the world. This child, the son of an African American man and an Indian Princess, is cast as a messenger and messiah of a utopian alliance between pan-Asia and pan-Africa. In exploring the relationship between these two reproductive portraits, the article moves from a discussion of Du Bois′s critique of the ideological construction of the U.S. as a white nation reproduced by white progenitors, to an examination the literary figuration of a b1aek mother out of whose womb a black diasporic anti-imperialist alliance springs. In contrast to previous scholarship, which has tended to focus on the critique of U.S. racial nationalism that Du Bois expressed in his early work, or on the internationalism that he later embraced, this article pays close attention to how Du Bois′s anti-nationalist and internationalist politics together subtended by subtle, but constitutive, sexual politics.

• 영어영문학
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• 제55권6호
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• pp.1035-1056
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• 2009

Korean adoptee narratives have proliferated over the last ten years as adopted Koreans have begun to represent their own experiences of violent dislocation, displacement and loss in various forms of literary and artistic works, including poems, autobiographical works, novels, documentaries and films. These narratives by Korean adoptees have intervened in the current diaspora discourse to question further the traditional categories of race, ethnicity, culture and nation by representing the unique experiences of the forced and involuntary migration of adopted Koreans. For a long time, the adoption discourse has been mostly constructed from the perspectives of adoptive parents. Therefore the voice of adoptees as well as that of the birth mothers have not been properly heard or represented in adoption discourse. According to Hosu Kim, the U. S. adoption discourse, feeling pressured to deal with the stigma of the commodification of children, changed from viewing the adoptees as children who had been rescued from poverty and abandonment to considering them as a gift from the birth mothers. With the emergence of the gift rhetoric in transnational adoption, the birth mothers erased from adoption discourse have begun to be acknowledged as one of the central characters in the adoption triad. If Korean adoptees are the "the ghostly children of Korean history," the birth mothers are their "ghostly doubles" who "bear the mark of a repressed national trauma." Somebody's Daughter represents the female experiences of becoming an adopted child and of being a birth mother. In particular, the novel makes a birth mother, the forgotten presence in adoptee narratives, into a central figure in the triangular relationship created by international adoption. The novel historicizes the experiences of a Korean adoptee growing up in America as well as those of a mother who had suffered silently from feelings of unbearable loss, guilt, grief and from unforgettable memories. In addition, narrating the birth mother's story is a way to give humanity back to these forgotten women in Korean adoption history. Revisiting the site of loss both for a mother and a daughter through the novel is an act of collective mourning. The narratives about and by Korean adoptees force Korean intellectuals to reflect seriously upon Korean society and its underlying ideology which prevents a woman from mothering her own baby, and to take an ethical and political stand on this current social and political issue.

• 패션비즈니스
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• 제9권6호
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• pp.160-174
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• 2005

Despite the decrease in the number of children due to low birth rate, the domestic children's apparel market has been achieving steady growth as family income is rising thanks to more opportunities for working women, parents spend more on their children, and they prefer brand products that make their children look special. In addition, the market is suffering from hard competition as large enterprises have joined the race. The present study purposed to survey the children's apparel market in Korea, which is in a transitional period, and to contribute to the development of the market with Korean brands. For this purpose, we analyzed the characteristics of children's apparel brands in the 21st century based on the current state of the domestic children's apparel market and, based on the findings, forecasted the future trend of children's apparel brands, suggested improvements for expected problems, proposed standards for coping with changes such as diversification, high quality and differentiation in the children's apparel market, and provided consumers with information on how to purchase products. According to the result of analyzing the characteristics of children's apparel brands in the 21st century, brands are categorized largely into four types - life cultural brands, functional product brands, character brands and brands advancing to China. Life cultural brands equipped with all necessities for children are expanding, and with the deepening social problems of environmental pollution and the reduction of the child population, functional products made of environment-friendly materials are spreading widely, targeting infants and children. Furthermore, for extending age targets and diversifying products, children's apparel is using characters. The use of characters is expected to have a considerable effect on the growth of brands because children are more subjective as consumers than before and they are more easily persuaded with characters. Domestic children's apparel brands advancing to China have a high expectation of success in overcoming the limitation of the local market that has reached its peak and growing into global brands. Korean apparel makers are struggling to overcome the depressed domestic market, to recover consumers' consumption, to cope with market opening, to pursue high value of sensibility and to expand the seniors' market, etc. In this situation, future trends of children's apparel brands will be the expansion of family brands, brand totalization, quality price, niche market (pre-teen market), etc. In response to these trends, we made the following suggestions for improvement. 1. Children's apparel brands are evolving into family brands as well as into total brands through voluming. Today, however, apparel makers are advancing to the children's apparel market with the concept of adults' apparel and, as a result, children's apparel is merely adults' apparel of reduced size, having problems in design, color and materials. Thus, apparel makers must develop design considering the wide range of size and the characteristics of children's apparel, strengthen sourcing abilities to create revenues, and make thorough survey of customers to find common denominators between adults' apparel and children's apparel considering that characteristic that the target class is different from the buyer class. Furthermore, they must make active investments in human resources, develop outstanding products through advanced planning and design, and support marketing techniques and management systems to stores. 2. As the declining birth rate will continue to have a negative effect on the market, it may be difficult to expand the market size but there is still a margin for growth through high-sensibility and high-quality products. The competitiveness of brands is determined by their market shares. Accordingly, concepts should be specialized according to lifestyle, customers' diverse needs should be satisfied, and cross-coordination should be achieved within a brand. 3. Considering Korean parents who do not spare investment in their children despite shrinking consumption, functional products must be high value-added goods that can enhance efficiency. However, in the current situation of the infants' apparel industry where a textile manufacturer supply its products to multiple brands, it is difficult to develop unique products only based on materials. Thus, it is considered urgent to appeal to consumers not by relying on materials only but by finding methods of applying their own characters to children's dress.