“My name is Arthur Gordon Pym”

Jang.Sungjin 중앙대학교 영미언어와문화연구소 2011 영미언어와문화 Vol.2 No.1

Focusing on Pym’s dream-like experience in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym Nantucket (Pym), several scholars have posited that the story is about the search for unity. However, instead of simply reading the tale as the search for unity by way of Pym’s death, it is also possible to interpret the story as the fragmented, split, and penetrated subject’s longing to return to the unified subject: “$ to S.” Lacan believes that the fragmented subject ($) appears in the world when the subject is separated from the Mother (S). For this, Lacan, following Freud’s argument, suggests that the subject’s separation from the Mother results in the birth of language. He believes that the subject is created only in the network of signifiers; however, a newly created subject disappears when one signifier is substituted for another. In other words, one subject enters the world and, at the same time, it disappears by another “signifier.” Thus, I, based on Lacan’s argument, want to suggest that Pym reveals not only the fragmented subject’s yearning for the reunion with the Mother, but also the subject’s failure to reunite with the Mother. No matter how the fragmented subject tries to reach the Mother, the fragmented subject cannot be reunited with the unified subject. Yet it would be unwise to merely say that Pym’s failure to reunite with the Mother denotes the fragmented subject’s failure to be the unified subject. Rather, I will suggest that the failure of Pym as the fragmented subject-the subject’s separation from the Mother-in fact signifies the fragmented subject’s entrance into the Symbolic represented as language. Pym’s story begins with the fragmented subject and also ends with the same fragmented subject, not with the unified subject. As Pym embarks on his first journey by taking a ship, he also finishes his journey in a boat. The ships the Ariel, the Grampus, the Jane Guy, and the ship, which rescues Pym at the end of the story are also signifiers themselves. Whenever Pym gets on those ships to continue his journey toward the Mother, he is simply on signifiers consisting of the chain of signifiers. As the signifiers are floating away on the sea of indeterminacy, the ships are always replaced by other ships and slide away without the fixed quilting point. As long as Pym continues on his journey, he is always replaced by another and deceived, and his ship is also replaced by another ship. Pym never returns to the Mother. To some degree, Pym’s survival from the near-death experience seems to emphasize Pym’s failure to be reunited with the Mother. Nevertheless, Pym’s failure should be understood as the fragmented subject’s entrance into the Symbolic represented as language. For Lacan, the reality of human beings consists of three interwoven levels: the Imaginary (pre-verbal register), the Symbolic (linguistic dimension, or, more correctly, the chain of signifiers), and the Real (beyond language, or the reality that the subject must assume but, at the same time, can never know). After returning to his home, Pym-under the condition that Mr. Poe writes the early portion of his adventures and, in turn, Pym, without revealing his true identity, takes over the rest-agrees to write a story about his adventures. Pym is the narrator of this tale, but, at the same time, Pym is not the real narrator. This double-meaning reinforces the concept of méconnaissance, the child’s misrecognition of the reflected image as his self; therefore, Pym’s use of a pseudonym connotes his entrance into the Symbolic. In this regard, Poe’s Pym shows not only the fragmented subject’s desire for the Mother but also the fragmented subject’s entrance into the Symbolic.

D. H. Lawrence and SimCity: “The Man Who Loved Islands” as the Failed Player

( Sungjin Jang ) 한국로렌스학회 2017 D.H. 로렌스 연구 Vol.25 No.1

This paper attempts to understand Cathcart`s tragic death in Lawrence`s “The Man Who Loved Islands” as a failed gameplay, connecting Lawrence`s work with a video game called SimCity. SimCity in general is a city-building video game. The game player as a mayor needs to create and develop her or his own Simcity from a patch of green land. Likewise, Cathcart desperately wants to create his own Simcity. On the first island, he fails to create his Simcity because it is his first time. He does not know how to manage the complex interpersonal and financial aspects of running a Simcity. On his second play, Cathcart seems to win because he has learned about how to deal with those situations. However, his romantic relationship with Flora makes Cathcart a Sim and Flora the Master, and so Cathcart loses the ability to create his utopia if he cannot be the master. Cathcart pares down his potential Simcity even further by choosing an uninhabited island; Cathcart hopes to successfully create a utopia with as little interference as possible. However, the severe snow that Cathcart encounters three times not only destroys his Simcity, but it also kills him. In this respect, Cathcart`s death should be understood as his losing the game.

Game Theory based Dynamic Spectrum Allocation for Secondary Users in the Cell Edge of Cognitive Radio Networks

( Sungjin Jang ),( Jongbae Kim ),( Jungwon Byun ),( Yongtae Shin ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2014 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.8 No.7

Cognitive Radio (CR) has very promising potential to improve spectrum utilization by allowing unlicensed Secondary Users (SUs) to access the spectrum dynamically without disturbing licensed Primary Users (PUs). Mitigating interference is a fundamental problem in CR scenarios. This is particularly problematic for deploying CR in cellular networks, when users are located at the cell edge, as the inter-cell interference mitigation and frequency reuse are critical requirements for both PUs and SUs. Further cellular networks require higher cell edge performance, then SUs will meet more challenges than PUs. To solve the performance decrease for SUs at the cell edge, a novel Dynamic Spectrum Allocation (DSA) scheme based on Game Theory is proposed in this paper. Full frequency reuse can be realized as well as inter-cell interference mitigated according to SUs` sensing, measurement and interaction in this scheme. A joint power/channel allocation algorithm is proposed to improve both cell-edge user experience and network performance through distributed pricing calculation and exchange based on game theory. Analytical proof is presented and simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves high efficiency of spectrum usage and improvement of cell edge SUs` performance.

Holmes’s Failure of Observing in “A Scandal in Bohemia”

Sungjin Jang 21세기영어영문학회 2017 영어영문학21 Vol.30 No.3

This paper aims to offer a different reading of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” by employing labyrinth and maze metaphors to suggest a reason for Holmes failure to apprehend Irene Adler. Whereas the labyrinth has only one right pathway to identity, the maze has various pathways. This difference between the labyrinth and the maze helps us understand why Holmes is outwitted by Alder at the end of the story. Holmes, who sees London as a labyrinth, firmly believes that there is only one way to view Adler’s identity: a submissive and passive Victorian woman. However, Alder, unlike Holmes, regards London as a maze so she maintains various identities: American woman, retired opera singer, single woman, married woman, young man, and a human-animal hybrid. Adler’s multiple identities connote that she cannot simply be defined as a single type of woman, and it is this freedom that allows her to escape capture. Thus, Holmes loses the case against Adler because of his labyrinthine view, while Adler succeeds because she can observe London, and by extension the world, properly.

Coffee'n LoaF

Jang Sungjin(장성진) 현대건축사 2012 마루 Vol.- No.129

Coffee'n LoaF

Jang Sungjin(장성진) 현대건축사 2012 (월간)Maru Vol.- No.129

Wandering Multiple Pathways: “Labyrinth-Spiel” and Joyce`s Mazed “Wandering Rocks”

( Sungjin Jang ) 한국제임스조이스학회 2016 제임스조이스저널 Vol.22 No.1

Games have helped to understand the relationship between space and place. Although there are various understandings of space and place, I argue that space is a physical location and place is the way in which space is socially, culturally, politically, and historically organized. Based on these definitions, this paper asserts that the “Labyrinth-Spiel” game-James Joyce played with his daughter Lucia when he was working on “Wandering Rocks” in Ulysses-gave him a fundamental reconfiguration of space and place that a space can always be overwritten by different places. The object of Labyrinth-Spiel is to return to the starting point. Players must get their pieces across the space of the board, moving the pieces according to dice rolls. For every move, players need to choose left, right, or center, which can create multiple paths across the board. Because of the random movements (achieved through dice rolls) and players’ judgments in choosing their ways across, each time players play the game, they choose different pathways. As a result, the outcome is always different. This different outcome suggests that there is no one right way to cross the board. Thus the space of the board has a variety of places if every route is seen as a different game and therefore a unique interpretation of the space of the board. This way of reading the game, as having many places on the space of the board, is key in understanding how Joyce writes Dublin in “Wandering Rocks.” By inserting thirty-one interpolations in the nineteen sections in the episode, Joyce creates multiple pathways that lead to different readings of Dublin. The result of this technique is that, for a single geographical space (Dublin), there are many places, as in the game Labyrinth-Spiel. Just as there is no one right way to move across the board of the game, there is also no one right way to read Dublin. By connecting the interpolations differently, readers choose different pathways, thus reading Dublin differently. Reading “Wandering Rocks” is thus much like playing the board game.

The Success and Failure of Masculine Light in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native and Rudyard Kipling’s The Light that Failed

Sungjin Jang 한국문화융합학회 2019 문화와 융합 Vol.41 No.2

빅토리아 시대에, 여성들은 남성중심주의사회에서 차별을 받아왔다. 러스킨의 이데올로기는 여성들을 집안에 가두어버렸고, 여성들은 남성들의 감시의 대상이 되어왔다. 산업혁명 이후로 빅토리아 사회는 인력의 부족을 겪어왔고, 남성과 여성의 성별간의 간격이 커졌으며, 이러한 경제적 그리고 인구적인 차이에 의해서, 집안에 갇혀버린 여성에게 탈출구가 생기기 시작했다. 그리고 1890년대에 소위 말하는 ‘신여성’이 등장하기 시작했다. 이 ‘신여성’의 등장에 반하여, 남성중심주의사회인 빅토리아 사회는 여성을 억압하려 했지만, 종국에는 실패하고 말았다. 이러한 사회적인 배경을 바탕으로, 본 논문은 토마스 하디의 『귀향』을 통해서는, 주인공이 남성중심주의사회에서 벗어나려고 하지만 비극적인 결말을 맞는 것을 살펴보고, 이러한 비극적인 결말과 달리, 여성의 탈출의 가능성을 키플링의 『실패한 불빛』에서 찾아보고자 한다. 하디의 『귀향』과 달리 키플링의 『실패한 불빛』에서는 ‘신여성’으로 대변되는 빨간머리 여성과 메이지에 의해서, 딕은 남성 시선을 잃어버리고 결국에는 비극적인 죽음을 맞이하게 된다. During the Victorian era, women were treated differently within male-oriented society. The dominant discourse based on Ruskin s ideal locked women up in the domestic field, and the inspecting male gaze kept women under their surveillance; there was no escape from the male gaze. However, due to the Industrial Revolution,Victorian society suffered from a shortage of hands. Additionally, the demographic disparity between men and women increased. For both economic and demographic reasons, women escaped from their domestic spheres, and in the 1890s, the New Woman appeared. As a consequence, male-oriented Victorian society s efforts to control women failed. As Cunningham rightly points out, these historical changes in women s status are well-revealed in many Victorian novels. With this in mind, I examine the ways in which the female character in Thomas Hardy s The Return of the Native tries to escape from male-dominated Victorian society, although she ultimately fails to do so. I then discuss how the seemingly powerful male gaze loses its authority to the subversive female gaze in Rudyard Kipling s The Light That Failed.

Failing the Game Quests in James Joyce’s “Araby”

( Sungjin Jang ) 한국영어영문학회 2018 영어 영문학 Vol.64 No.3

This paper suggests a different reading of James Joyce’s “Araby” by offering the video game as a lens through which we can reimagine the story. Understanding the unnamed boy’s journey to the Araby bazaar as a fetch quest, this paper focuses on the boy’s failure to complete this quest. As soon as the boy promises Mangan’s sister something from Araby, his fetch quest begins. In order to complete the quest, the boy must successfully perform three sub-quests: get money from his uncle as early as he can, get on the train for the Araby bazaar on time, and pass through the sixpenny entrance at the bazaar. However, because his uncle comes home late, the boy fails to get the money early, and that sets off the subsequent failures. The boy then takes the train late and arrives at the bazaar so late that he feels he must go through any entrance. So he walks through the adult entrance by mistake. As a result, he does not have enough money to buy a gift, failing the larger quest. But, regardless of this failure, the boy can try these quests as many as he wants until he finally succeeds in completing them. But no matter how the boy tries to accomplish these sub-quests, he is doomed to fail them because he cannot make his uncle come home early. The more he tries his quest, the more bitterly he realizes that he will ultimately fail. In this respect, the boy’s “anguish and anger” should be understood as his epiphany: the re-playability of the game is possible, but all the replays lead to the same failure: losing the game. In this regard, reading Joyce’s “Araby” is much like playing a video game.

The Breakdown of Space and Place: Conrad`s Nihilism in The Secret Agent

( Sungjin Jang ) 한국근대영미소설학회 2017 근대 영미소설 Vol.24 No.1

“The breakdown of Space and Place: Conrad`s Nihilism in The Secret Agent” argues that Conrad`s nihilism derives from the collapse of the distinction between space and place. The result of this breakdown is seen in how London is both familiar and foreign, in how Verloc`s home and shop are one building, and in how the Italian restaurant all counter readerly expectations by either distorting the typical place or outright altering the usual place assigned to those spaces. In this London, the characters show how the labyrinth and maze metaphors are used to try and make an unmappable city mappable in order to find their identities. Winnie, who is the prime example of how a character employs the labyrinth, tries to make Verloc`s home-shop an ideal Victorian home. To Winnie, the home is the only path towards her identity of mother. Verloc, however, uses the maze to move sideways through various pathways, thus maintaining multiple identities. The Professor, unlike both Winnie and Verloc, refuses to read the city, embracing Conrad`s nihilism. Because of these various reactions to an illegible London, it appears that Conrad himself is looking on the separation of space and place with terror, which he then transfers to the different characters.