Peter Y. Paik

DOI: Vol.65(No.2) 203-222, 2019

One of the most striking cultural developments in recent years is the increasing willingness of scholars, intellectuals, and producers of mass culture to express the view that human beings are hopelessly destructive life-forms. Since the emergence of modern industry, the activities of human beings have inflicted incalculable damage to the natural world in the form of habitat destruction and the loss of biodiversity, the acidification of the oceans, the depletion of non-renewable resources, and the irreversible alteration of the climate. The concept of the Anthropocene, which has emerged as a prominent term in the scholarly humanities, holds that humans have attained powers of so great a magnitude as to bring about a new geological era. Works of criticism as well as of film and television now openly raise the question as to whether the earth would be better off without the species that threatens other species with extinction. According to these works, human beings are the greatest threat to life on the planet. This article argues that such a fixation on the prospect of human extinction in the West does not arise out of the desire to persuade human beings to change their destructive ways, but instead reflects a form of nihilistic confusion in which the liberal West wishes to destroy the foundations of its civilization while at the same time seeking to spread its view of autonomy as the highest value to the rest of the globe. In unraveling this contradiction, the article examines works of cinema such as the science fiction film Prometheus and engages the work of theorists and thinkers such as Claire Colebrook, John Gray, and Jean Baudrillard.

Anthropocene, climate change, extinction, liberalism, misan-thropy

Jason Barker

DOI: Vol.65(No.2) 223-234, 2019

This paper uses a review of Gayatri Spivak’s Critique of Post-Colonial Reason as a means to reappraise her theory of subalternity. Published in the London Review of Books in 1999, the review illustrates the chauvinism of which its author, Terry Eagleton, is eminently capable; and, by extension, that of literary theory and its prejudice toward postcolonial studies. My impulse for returning to this review, given its age, is that it reflects a renewed focus in the theoretical humanities on ethical questions and on right and wrong ways of speaking and writing. Such focus reflects in part the fact that westerners, too, in addition to their non-western “others,” are increasingly feeling victimized and disempowered by economic and social injustice. At least such has been the case since the start of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, when western Marxists have been lining up to include the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in their Grand Narrative of a crisis of global capitalism. To cite the title of Alain Badiou’s book, Le reveil de l’histoire (The Rebirth of History) what we are allegedly faced with here is History “waking up” or being “reborn.” The paper argues that in taking to task Spivak’s “illiteracy,” Eagleton inadvertently reveals the political stakes of Spivak’s writing, and the significance of its “illiterary” style.

Terry Eagleton, literary theory, postcolonial studies, Spivak, subalternity

Seonna Kim

DOI: Vol.65(No.2) 235-253, 2019

The article examines the two forms of ghostly or spectral figures and their dynamics depicted in Heinz Insu Fenkl’s autobiographical novel, Memories of My Ghost Brother. The ghosts or specters in the novel, which signify absent presence and not only death but also an afterlife, foremost manifest the spectral existence of U.S. empire and its global bio / necropolitics hovering across Asia in the Cold War state of exception that became the rule or normalcy and producing death and violence. They also refer to the excluded and displaced subjects produced and maintained by the specter of U.S. empire and rendered ghostly or spectralized, including camptown prostitutes and their Amerasian children. Drawing on critical biopolitical studies and Jacques Derrida’s notion of the specter, I argue that these forms of spectral figures not only make legible the afterlives of the U.S. Cold War interventions across Asia, but also make it possible to imagine the ethics and politics of the ghostly subjects. While existing scholarship on the novel views the spectral subjects merely as a precarious and victimized figure, my study turns to the question of ethics imagined in the novel that seeks a spectropolitics of the ghostly others who form ethical transnational, transracial relationships to move beyond the spectralizing bio / necropolitical order of U.S. empire toward a decolonized future.

Memories of My Ghost Brother, biopolitics, necropolitics, spectropolitics, spectrality

Geumhee Park

DOI: Vol.65(No.2) 255-274, 2019

The purpose of this study is to explore the ways in which socio-econo-political ideologies of both native and adoptive countries are traumatizing immigrants and how immigrants’ trauma is shared between generations. This has been done by examining such traumatic experiences represented in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker, which features the melancholic and self-isolated protagonist Henry Park, by using Michelle Balaev’s theory of trauma as a disease that can be transmitted to others through narratives. The result of the analysis is that Henry’s father’s authoritativeness and economic-success-obsession, influenced by Korean Confucian careerism, are important factors causing Henry’s melancholy and self-isolation. Also, a diasporic life as a model minority in the United States is another predominant socio-political factor burdening Korean Americans and causing them to live a melancholic life, as observed in the career of John Kwang, who experiences a disaster after his prideful regression to a Confucian androcentric lifestyle and by being blind to the “big picture” of America despite his econo-political success. As revealed in the novel, Korean Americans’ focus on Confucian careerism and designation as a model minority are responsible for their familial and national trauma. This coss-cultural trauma eventually makes the successful acculturation of Korean Americans more difficult, aggravating their maladjustment. These findings may provide all immigrants, especially Korean Americans, with new momentum to identify the problems of econo-socio-political ideologies in both countries, and therefore escape the influence of such ideologies and enjoy a free and independent diasporic life.

Native Speaker, Trauma infection, Michelle Balaev, Confucian careerism, Model minority

Qian Wang

DOI: Vol.65(No.2) 275-285, 2019

While there have been numerous studies on Rudyard Kipling’s writing about the British Raj, relatively little has been done on his perception of China. This paper looks at Rudyard Kipling’s representation of China in his collection of early travel letters From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches: Letters of Travel (1899). The encounter with Chinese immigrant labourers provoked profound psychological disturbances for Kipling, as was revealed in his persistent and obsessive need to solve the “Chinese question” throughout these letters. This paper analyses the figuration of the Chinese and considers how it contributes to the debate about the effects of Chinese immigration emerging in the second half of the nineteenth century. Kipling’s representation of the immigrant Chinese partakes of, and is conducive to, a Yellow Perilist preoccupation with invasion scares. Further, Kipling’s seemingly unaccountable fear and extreme hatred of the Chinese were the result of his frustration to solve “the Chinese question.” The supposedly paradoxical nature of the Chinese frustrated Kipling’s attempt to interpret them in clear-cut ways and in turn provoked his extreme abhorrence and vituperation. Finally, the paper also reflects on the ways in which different formations of imperialism might inflect British representations of China, as indicated by Kipling’s writing.

Rudyard Kipling, Chinese immigration, colonial discourse, mimicry, Yellow Peril

Younghee Kho

DOI: Vol.65(No.2) 287-306, 2019

This essay explores the complicated working of silence in the narrative temporality of Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September. In particular, this essay argues that the moments of Anglo-Irish silence, despite their attempt to freeze real time and suppress the movement of history, syncopate the novel’s ending - the demise of the Anglo-Irish visualized in the conflagration of the Big Houses. Looking back on the tumultuous period of Ireland in the early 1920s, Bowen writes her novel such that the past-ness of the events is self-evident. She could not free herself from the notion of linear and progressive history, as observed in Bowen’s Court as well as The Last September. The novel is thus designed to move toward the anticipated conflagration of the Big Houses in the ending. Such teleological narrative movement, however, is impeded by silence imposed by the Anglo-Irish whenever they need to articulate their identity and political position. The moments of silence in The Last September are those of Anglo-Irish equivocation and evasion, reflecting their deep-seated anxiety and fear of exposing themselves to the outside world. Wrapped in the illusion created by the Big House and living according to the tempo it generates, the Anglo-Irish have, at their peril, remained blind and deaf to the historical reality outside the Big House. This essay traces such social and psychological deadlock Bowen recorded and especially marked through their silence in The Last September. Only with such acknowledgement, she could restore and preserve their way of life in her art.

the Anglo-Irish, History, the Big House, Teleological Narrative, Silence

정윤길 Youn-gil Jeong

DOI: Vol.65(No.2) 307-326, 2019

This article aims to explore the possibility of new interpretation on Sarah Ruhl’s dramaturgy by analyzing Dead Man’s Cell Phone in terms of Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics. Sarah Ruhl has found much success as a contemporary playwright, and her works focus on female protagonists. Ruhl’s works has been regarded as a feminist and the innovative methods she creates the play qualifies it as a significant contribution to feminist theatre. The relationships between the living and the dead have been a recurrent thematic concern in her works. Generally, The themes of Dead Man’s Cell Phone is said to explore America’s post-millennial fixation with wireless communication. Dead Man’s Cell Phone explores the fragmentation of conversations, voices, and lives, moves irreverently among subjects like mortality and memory. Emmanuel Lenvinas’ ethics is based on the Other / other. He argues that we are in an asymmetrical relationship with our neighbour that pre-destines us with ethical responsibility even before consciousness or choice. In the face-to-face encounter an infinity and alterity about our neighbour is revealed, which is irreducible to my ontological grasp-and thereby compels me to respond to him. It is also through this relation that our humanity is released as our solipsistic “all-for-myself” becomes a “being-for-the-other”. Furthermore, the “I” is irreplaceable, thereby making each of us ethically responsible for our neighbour, even to the point of responsibility for his material misery.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Sarah Ruhl, Emmanuel Lenvinas, the Other, Ethics, 『죽은 남자의 휴대폰』, 세러 룰, 에마뉘엘 레비나스, 타자, 윤리학

박윤영 Yoon-young Park

DOI: Vol.65(No.2) 327-342, 2019

This article analyzes how law drives citizens out of the category of “normal” in Philip Osment’s This Island’s Mine. Osment shows how minorities are alienated in a ‘legitimate’ manner in a modern metropolis called London, England. “This Island’s Mine” is borrowed from Caliban’s word in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Osment portrays how citizens are deprived of their sovereign rights on their lands and become alienated by alluding to Caliban. In order to analyze this text, this article uses Walter Benjamin and Slavoj Zizek’s theory on law and violence. In particular, by taking note of the reasons of Zizek’s “subjects supposed to. . .,” this article analyzes the systemic violence working in society. In addition, by confirming how structural violence, symbolic violence, and subjective violence are intermingled, this article also examines what kind of violence citizens are exposed to the moment they become ‘abnormal’ citizens. This article analyzes the effects of violence that Selwyn, an African-American and homosexual, is exposed to by law. The process of his becoming “abnormal” reveals that no one can be free from the threat of becoming “abnormal” in the face of violent law. Through this analysis, this article confirms that Caliban, the object of violence, is not a stranger, but our neighbor, and even ourselves.

필립 오스먼트, 『이 섬은 나의 것』, 『템페스트』, 폭력, 캘리번, Philip Osment, This Island’s Mine, The Tempest, Violence, Caliban

김정미 Jeong-mi Kim

DOI: Vol.65(No.2) 343-363, 2019

On its surface, the story of Hard Times attacks the utilitarian ideology and the educational system founded on it. Beneath this exterior it shows us a class struggle going on between working class and industrial bourgeosie. In this context, it seems that Dickens takes working class’s side by highlighting the evil disposition that self-made capitalist in this story has. But there is something hidden in this novel that is contradictory to writer’s intention, that is not controlled by the consciousness of him. Fredric Jameson insists that beneath the form of a narrative lies the political unconscious which we can find by rewriting the texts in the light of ethical, social, and historical criticisms respectively. Jameson’s interpretive method focuses on restoring the original message of a novel that lies being distorted by various kinds of censorship. He puts a literary work in the historical context in an attempt to get a complete picture from the whole human history and thereby uncover the political unconscious of the text. Yet the unconscious of the text lies subtly disguised like the unconscious of the human psyche. Hence it necessitates several interpretive steps to grasp the meaning of the textual unconscious. Jameson likens this critical process to the work of a sculptor chiseling off unnecessary parts of his material. Viewed in this context, the message this novel gives us is not the one that Dickens tries to give us but the one that the text itself reveals through the political unconscious of the novel.

『어려운 시절』, 제임슨, 정치적 무의식, 이데올로기소, 형식의 이데올로기, Hard times, Jameson, Political Unconscious, Ideologeme, Ideology of Form

류연지 Yeonji Ryu

DOI: Vol.65(No.2) 365-389, 2019

Early novels about adolescence featured adolescent characters who were trying to adapt themselves to adults’ expectations or social norms. Their storylines assumed an educative role by instilling an ideal model of adolescents into teenagers. However, as Robert Cormier published adolescent novels in the 1970s, the stream of adolescent literature was converted. Since the emergence of novels by Cormier, adolescent characters facing social issues and struggling against critical situations rather than adapting themselves to social norms began appearing. Cormier’s novels employ new adolescent characters that are a departure from “adolescent images” represented by preexisting adolescent literature, playing the role of reconstructing or deconstructing socially constructed adolescent features. His novel, I am the Cheese include minute descriptions of adolescent characters who strive to escape from their critical situations by themselves but fail in the end. Cormier enables readers to realize the social problem of imposing a “collective identity” on teenagers through adolescent characters in his novels. He discloses that any “adolescence” allowed and accepted in society is not the underlying nature of teenagers but something fictional shaped by social norms. This study is a review of Cormier’s view of adolescents and interprets “adolescence” from a critical point of view through analyses of his primary novel, I am the Cheese, and discusses his novels’ influence on adolescent literature and its meaning.

로버트 코미어, 청소년소설, 정체성 정치학, 청소년성, 『나는 치즈다』, Robert Cormier, adolescent novel, Identity Politics, adolescent features, I am the Cheese