Jung-suk Hwang

DOI: Vol.67(No.4) 551-567, 2021

By contrasting the controversial picture of a man falling from the World Trade Center on the day of the 9/11 attacks―which was eventually banned from public press―with the faces and bodies of non-Western (particularly African) victims that are openly exposed by the Western media, Susan Sontag problematizes the imperialist gaze and the unequal power dynamics embedded in circulating and consuming the representation of a historical event that occurred outside the West. She criticizes that such representations transform the pain of the African Other into shocking imagery and cliché for Western audiences, reproducing pre-existing and widely circulated stereotypes of Africa―a dark, primitive place of tribal conflicts, inhuman violence and genocides, stricken with poverty and AIDS. These stereotypes are perpetuated in literary texts. Gil Courtemanche’s novel, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali (2000), which depicts one of the most violent human-made disasters in the twentieth century, is a notable example of the aforementioned issues in representing a historical event in the context of an African tragedy. Analyzing how Courtemanche adapts the 1994 Rwandan genocide into a well-structured love story between Bernard Valcourt―a Quebeciois journalist―and Gentille, a Tutsi girl, I examine how the novel represents the genocide as an exotic African event and reproduces stereotypes about Africa. I also reveal the imperialist discourse underlying Courtemanche’s representation of his narrator as a Western humanitarian and problematize how the novel silences the voices of the Rwandan people.

Courtemanche, Rwandan genocide, Western humanitarian, representation, imperialism

Youngbin Hyeon

DOI: Vol.67(No.4) 569-590, 2021

This paper explores the intersectionality of race, labor, stereotype, and self-alienation in an Asian American context, using Philip Kan Gotanda’s Yankee Dawg You Die (1988) as the primary text. The Asian stereotypes have long affected American mass media’s representation of Asian Americans, exposing them to a serious degree of alienation and identity crisis that is reproduced and inherited between generations. Therefore, this paper argues that Yankee Dawg’s main focus is not on the individuals involved in the intergenerational conflict but on the American system which forces them to reproduce the stereotypes as well as the racial self-alienation. To analyze the structure of racial self-alienation and search for the possibility of de-alienation, this paper firstly illuminates the origin of anti-Asian sentiment and Asian stereotypes, which is found in the history of Asian immigrant labor by which the bipolarization of Asian sexuality occurred in terms of media representation. Then, this paper moves on to investigate Yankee Dawg, focusing on how intergenerational conflict is built upon the unchallenged racial stereotypes and the inherited self-alienation of Asian American actors. Though a century has passed since the days of the coolies, the ontological crisis derived from stereotypes still plagues Asian Americans of the present and especially the representational laborers. Finally, the paper’s historical and textual analysis will search for the possibilities of de-alienation, by questioning the role of Asian American actors, audience, and racial ideology in fast-changing media markets.

racial stereotype, Asian American theater, representation, Philip Kan Gotanda, Yankee Dawg You Die

Daun Jung

DOI: Vol.67(No.4) 591-608, 2021

This paper argues that “Mary Barton” as a book title has taken center stage in the long-standing debates over the genre of the novel. As the novel seems to consist of two separate plots, it has often been criticized for its structural flaws or lack of organic unity. To make a critical intervention into this matter, this essay reads the title name “Mary Barton” as an important paratextual name lying between the text and the public. First, it will explore how the novel’s full title framed the text and influenced readers. Second, it will analyze Elizabeth Gaskell’s letters as they provide important epitexts that shed new light on the title-change of the novel. I ultimately show that the proper name “Mary Barton,” as a primary title, played a crucial role in determining the generic boundaries of the novel. While the proper name “Mary Barton” in the title indicates its genre as Bildungsroman, the secondary title “A Tale of Manchester Life” redefines the heroine as a public figure surrounded by the industrial environment, thus forming a mixed genre of “industrial Bildungsroman” in its paratextual effects on readers. In the process, the title name “Mary Barton” played a significant role in determining the generic boundaries of the novel. Not only did it engage in defining the subject matter of the novel as a signifier for the text, it was also circulated in the literary market as a short name for the book Mary Barton.

Genre problem of Mary Barton, “Mary Barton, ” Elizabeth Gaskell, Paratexts, Titles, Epitexts

Seogkwang Lee

DOI: Vol.67(No.4) 609-625, 2021

This paper takes Clausewitz’s claim that war is political and suffers from its compulsive illness. War of honour, if ever, plays out in a small part and soon gets tarnished as bloodbaths when the state takes away the lives of soldiers, and a political vision creeps in as Walzer echoes Clausewitz. With the hypocrite features of war, this essay examines the work of several war poets to precipitate the view that war is political in that it departs from protection and liberation to adapt the rules of its course in order to achieve its agenda regardless of the suffering it inflicts upon the individuals that war is imposed upon. Such victims are covered over and ignored by the false glory and worthiness of death that marks the discourse surrounding the war. The cunning employed to advocate such an endeavour takes several forms, whether the religious justification of war and the forgiveness of its destruction in Sassoon’s They, the clamorous celebration of an apparent victory in Harrison’s New Year 1916 and Chesnokov’s O Glorious Leader, or simply forgetting in Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth. The mothers left behind by these conflicts are given either blatant lies to assuage their suffering as in Sassoon’s The Hero or must endure their grief alone as in Pearse’s The Mother, unable to find comfort in whatever glorious cause took away their children. In reading these works, this paper elucidates the kitsch morality of super-imposing noble pretexts over callous evils.

motherhood, war, patriotism, religion, morality

Byoung Chun Min

DOI: Vol.67(No.4) 627-648, 2021

This essay attempts to read Mary Shelley’s retrospective writings (specifically, The Last Man, Preface to Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Preface to The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley) from the perspective that these writings include significant elements that highlight how the Hunt circle’s public ideals were received in the Victorian period. When Shelley wrote retrospectively about her husband, the ideal publicity that the Hunt circle attempted to embody in the context of post-Napoleonic politics and culture became not so much a feasible principle for realizing the public good as a past intellectual experiment about which only a critical assessment could be made from a later perspective. The disintegration of the Hunt circle caused by the deaths of the three key members (i.e., John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Byron), indeed, entailed the demise of all the practical public implications that the Hunt circle’s activities bore for contemporaries. Although Shelley was a consistent witness to all the public and private activities of the Hunt circle, her ambivalent position toward the Hunt circle made her vacillate between an insider and an outsider; therefore, while continuing to revive the Hunt circle’s achievements for the Victorian public, Shelley ceaselessly revealed a critical attitude toward the Hunt circle’s public practices at the same time. Given this unique position that Shelley assumed in relation to the Hunt circle, this essay explores how her retrospective writings on the Hunt circle reconstruct (or deconstruct) its members’ political, cultural practices and how this re/deconstruction inflects the Hunt circle’s notion of ideal publicity.

Mary Shelley, retrospective writings, the Hunt circle, the Victorian public, ideal publicity

정윤길 Youn-gil Jeong

DOI: Vol.67(No.4) 649-671, 2021

William Shakespeare is considered as part of a modern tradition trying to mirror the human condition and anxiety in all their absurdity. This research examines Shakespeare’s masterpiece Hamlet, as a precursor of Absurd theater. In Hamlet, Shakespeare represents the conflict between the absurdity of human existence and the painful perception of it in a meaningless world, which is stripped of all reasonal thoughts and explanations. To examine Hamlet in the context of the theatre of the Absurd, it will be discussed in relation to Albert Camus’s notion of the absurd with regard to their common concerns for the themes of the theatre of the Absurd such as uncertainty, death, madness and communication failure. I suggest seeing his madness as feigned madness, which can be traced from the notion of absurdity in Albert Camus. This research proposes his madness arises from the disintegration of previously accepted metaphysical and theological frameworks which had endowed existence with meaning and enables him to search for meaning in the absence of such logic. I assert that Hamlet’s action in the play is in motion towards death, and that is why he acknowledge that human existence which is absurd finally ends with death. Shakespeare exposed the futility of human labour when Hamlet made it clear that man in the precarious nature of human existence recognizes that all the experiences of his life are meaningless. This research will ultimately argue that Shakespeare’s Hamlet offers us an opportunity to speculate the meaning of life and absurdity in human condition.

absurd, Albert Camus, Hamlet, death, madness, 부조리, 알베르 카뮈, 『햄릿』, 죽음, 광기

박지혜 Jihay Park

DOI: Vol.67(No.4) 673-699, 2021

This paper separates immersive theatre from immersive experience, and explores the relation between audience interactivity and immersion in The Under Presents: Tempest (2020) by Tender Claws. Tender Claws’s VR immersive theatre that fuses Shakespeare’s drama and gameplay encourages the players to interact with the live actor, fellow participants, and the set to help realize the virtual version of Shakespeare’s tale of magic and forgiveness. Tempest is a multiplayer online game, and the relation between audience participation and immersion requires a game studies approach that distinguishes puzzle immersion from narrative immersion for such approach denies one specific kind of interactivity that guarantees the sense of intense involvement in all contexts, acknowledges the importance of the meaning of interactivity over its physical manifestation, and argues for an immersive experience that exists as a series of graded states. This paper applies the multivalent model of interactivity and examines cognitive interactivity, functional interactivity, explicit interactivity, and beyond-the-object interactivity in Tempest based on the author’s experience of the theatre along with the performance reviews shared through social media including Reddit and Oculus website (Facebook). The paper concludes that immersion in Tempest derives from various modes of interactivity and is experienced not as a felt/not felt binary but as a graded state consisting of states of engagement, engrossment, and total immersion. Tempest thus demonstrates how immersive theatre is not limited to tragedy and its sub-genres as well as how immersive experience can be constructed by gameplay (interactivity) as well as mise-en-scéne or design.

Tempest, VR theatre, virtual reality, interactivity and immersion, game studies, 『템페스트』, VR극, 가상 현실, 상호작용과 몰입, 게임학

박선화 Sunhwa Park

DOI: Vol.67(No.4) 701-721, 2021

This paper explores Doris Lessing’s perspective on color bar racism in her “Victoria and the Staveneys” in light of the concept of color-blind racism. By seeing that racial considerations including Blacks and Latinos shade almost everything in America, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva discusses racial inequality even though whites claim that race is no longer relevant. To explain contemporary racial inequality, he coins ‘color-blind racism’ which whites use in rationalizing minorities’s status as the product of market dynamics and cultural limitations. His argument that these new racism practices are subtle and nonracial is shown in Lessing’s “Victoria and the Staveneys.” Victoria as a black girl experiences black invisibility when she has to stay overnight in the family house of her white classmate, Thomas Staveney. His elder brother Edward who picks her up from the school consisting of minorities thinks she could be white. Furthermore, next morning the family forgets Victoria and her lunch box. After ten years, Victoria happens to meet Thomas whose interest is in only black girls. Victoria is like a nonracial commodity to Thomas who hides his racial interests without sounding racist. Victoria, who did not share her pregnancy with Thomas, introduces her six-year-old daughter Mary to the Staveneys due to her tough and poor life. The family accepts her but wants to re-orient Mary by sending her to a private school Victoria cannot afford, which arouses concerns about the potential to intercept Mary from Victoria’s life. This shows a new cultural racism, which helps Whites maintain their privilege by being shielded with color blindness.

Doris Lessing, “Victoria and the Staveneys, ” black invisibility, color-blind racism, new cultural racism, 도리스 레싱, 「빅토리아와 스테이브니 가족」, 흑인 불가시성, 색맹 인종차별, 새로운 문화적 인종차별

성창규 Changgyu Seong

DOI: Vol.67(No.4) 723-743, 2021

The paper attempts to interpret Elizabeth Bishop’s animal poems with the impersonality theory and the conception of ‘aura.’ Bishop observes natural landscapes, or seaside villages, and unfolds the poems with unique encounters with several animals, which are dissimilar to the human world. She considers rhetoric and colorful parables redundant with her own strict discipline and seeks language restraint and impersonality, which means not emotional changes & individual expressions but an escape from sentiment and personality. Walter Benjamin considers that it is possible for the subject and the object to have a psychological distance and to have empathy because of an authority difficult to access through aura. Bishop endeavors to communicate with animals at a certain locale or realize the incompatibility of the natural world. From shortly filming footage of gradual transition over time to taking snapshots of various movements, her animal poems such as “The Moose,” “Sandpiper,” “The Fish,” and “At the Fishhouse” are discussed in terms of impersonality, photography and aura concept. “The Moose” is described as her own experience, which is sublimated into poetic imagery such as the bus people and the moose like a few selected photos from numerous snaps. “Sandpiper,” which shows a satiric attitude toward romantic poetry, empirically compares the ecological characteristics of the bird with the role of poet’s, but follows the principle of molarity expressed as objectively as possible in the poetic form rather than confession or empathy. “The Fish,” which Bishop probably would have taken pictures of after fishing for herself, images the rainbow as the coexistence of things.

Elizabeth Bishop, “The Moose, ” “Sandpiper, ” “The Fish, ” aura, 엘리자베스 비숍, 「큰사슴」, 「도요새」, 「물고기」, 아우라

왕은철 Eunchull Wang

DOI: Vol.67(No.4) 745-768, 2021

J.M. Coetzee has given considerable attention to animal suffering, beginning with two Princeton lectures in the interesting form of fiction: “The Philosophers and the Animals” and “The Poets and the Animals.” Disgrace, his second Booker Prize-winning novel, takes up animal ethics as an integral part of the narrative. And his 2003 short story “The Old Woman and the Old Cats” reiterates and extends animal ethics he has powerfully developed in the previous works. The story brings into the narrative what Coetzee calls “conversion experience.” Elizabeth Costello, the same protagonist who appeared in the previous works such as two Princeton lectures and the eponymous Elizabeth Costello, comes across a female cat who is giving birth. Being a mother of two, she identifies with the female cat: “I too am a mother.” This corresponds to “conversion experience”: giving-over and surrender to “mute appeal of the kind that Levinas calls the look, in which the existential autonomy of the Other became irrefutable.” The story is a powerful testimony to how one can become responsive to mute appeal of the defenseless, naked animals who are abandoned when necessity demands. In so doing, the story provides a critique on Levinas’s anthropocentric philosophy in which the face always remains, to quote from Derrida, “a fraternal and human face.” It sides with and affirms Derrida for whom the animal is “more radically other than the other in whom I recognize my fellow or my neighbor.”

Coetzee, “The Old Woman and Cats, ” animal ethics, Derrida, Levinas, 쿳시, “노년의 여성과 고양이들”, 동물윤리, 데리다, 레비나스