Korean Americans’ Silence and Articulation: Sa-I-Gu as Re-Visioning America

( Im¸ Kyeong-kyu ) 동국대학교 영어권문화연구소 2011 영어권문화연구 Vol.4 No.2

This paper attempts at reading and analyzing Sa-I-Gu, a documentary video featuring Korean American's testimonies concerning the LA disturbance, as Korean American's re-visioning the meaning of America. I will explicate how Korean Americans as the in-between minority articulate the disturbance, breaking the silence imposed by the discursive system of media representation. The documentary video Sa-I-Gu collects various interviews with Korean Americans speaking about the L.A. disturbance. In response to the mainstream media's construction of “Korean American” as a model minority, the interviewees articulate their grief, loss, anger and the memoir - from the time of their arrival on American soil, their subsequent struggles to make their American dream come true, to the moment of disillusionment of their dreams. Their testimonies vividly explain how American racism gave a rise to Korean American nationalism within the American context. This paper concludes that Korean American's nationalistic consciousness of this sort - rather than falling into a pitfall of ethnocentricsm - would be the very site in which Korean Americans could encounter intersubjective desires for cultural hybridization.

Forget Asian America!: Towards Methodological Transnationalism in Asian American Studies

( Im¸ Kyeong-kyu ) 동국대학교 영어권문화연구소 2015 영어권문화연구 Vol.8 No.2

This paper has twin foci. First, I suggest “methodological transnationalism” as a new analytical tool in the era of transnationalism in which every single contradiction is globally overdetermined. Many Asian American cultural critics have so far drawn a fictional line between the domestic and the global. And they have remained within the arbitrary boundary of American studies, which results in consolidating the hegemony of American ideology. In this situation, methodological transnationalism boldly proposes that Asian American studies should transnationalize itself in terms of its methodology and practice, breaking down every fictional boundary. The ultimate goal of this methodological transnationalism is to forget Asian America and to bring an end to what we call identity politics. In fact, according to George Agamben’s conceptualization in Homo Sacer, Asian Americans' identity politics can be seen to have the same origin with Nazi’s death camp. And this death camp has the same root with the modern nation-state, whose discovery of the irrevocable link between birth and nation gives a concrete form to modern biopolitics. The methodological transnationalism strategically attempts to abolish the link between birth, nation and territory by relocating every text in the global context to create a discursive space on which we can stand neither as an Asian nor as an American, neither as a man nor as a woman, but as a human being.

2006 International Issue : Other Articles ; The Stolen Thing: Stephen`s Paradoxical Imaginings of the Nation in Ulysses

( Kyeong Kyu Im ) 한국제임스조이스학회 2006 제임스조이스저널 Vol.12 No.2

This paper aims at reexamining James Joyce`s troubled relationship with Ireland, one that is characteristically marked by ambivalence or paradox. Many scholars have tended to see it in terms of the creative tension between Joyce as a modernist aspiring to artistic universality, and Joyce as a native subject preoccupied with parochial identity. Such a tendency has mythically constructed Joyce as a metropolitan modernist. In countering this canonical formulation, this essay recontexualizes the question in terms of the psychological dynamics of national identification, by using Slavoj Zizek`s conceptualization of the nation as the "Nation-Thing." To illustrate these dynamics, this paper uses the Stephen Dedalus of Ulysses. Even though Joyce cannot be directly identified with Stephen, the latter`s ambivalent relationship with Ireland may well, in a number of ways, mirror that of Joyce. Through a close reading of first three chapters of Ulysses, this paper argues, after Zizek, that Stephen`s relationship with Ireland, or his national identification, is sustained by a relationship toward "the Nation qua Thing." Here, the Nation-Thing-as a non-discursive entity like Lacan`s "the Real"-exists outside language or the symbolic order, yet our access to it is only through a certain set of discursive practices, that is, a community`s "way of life" such as traditions, rituals and myths. This paradoxical nature of the Nation-Thing-oscillating between absence and presence-would enable us to explore the dynamics of national identification without reducing the nation into a purely discursive artifact, and thereby to give a historical and psychological justification to Joyce/Stephen`s ambivalent relationship with Ireland.

집의 (불)가능성 : 『제스처 라이프』에 나타난 분열된 욕망

임경규 ( Im¸ Kyeong Kyu ) 동국대학교 영어권문화연구소 2018 영어권문화연구 Vol.11 No.1

The world of Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life is full of irony. When the protagonist-narrator Franklin Hata, a marginalized subject in the racial relations in the US, attempts at assimilation into the US social reality, all his seemingly harmless gestures toward the other people turn out to be extreme cruelties. Furthermore, he cannot resist the lure of American dream that promises him a seamless assimilation. Ironically, the more he doubts about the promise, the stronger his desire for assimilation becomes. The aim of this paper is to delve deep into this irony. In order to do this, this paper defines Hata's long and difficult journey from Korea to Japan, and finally to the US as a desire for an authentic home―a place that he can feel full presence of the self. In this journey, his desire for home is bifurcated. On the one hand, he unconsciously suffers from diasporic longing for the original homeland, Korea, which is expressed through his inevitable relationship with K and Sunny. On the other hand, he cannot give up the aspiration to become part of dominant culture, which finds its prolongation in his beloved Tudor house. However, this paper argues that his diasporic desire for Korea is in fact a precondition for his unconditional surrender to the dominant ideology.

The Stolen Thing: Stephen's Paradoxical Imaginings of the Nation in Ulysses

Kyeong Kyu Im (임경규) 한국제임스조이스학회 2006 제임스조이스저널 Vol.12 No.2

The Stolen Thing: Stephen’s Paradoxical Imaginingsof the Nation in Ulysses Kyeong-Kyu Im This paper aims at reexamining James Joyce’s troubled relationship with Ireland, one that is characteristically marked by ambivalence or paradox. Many scholars have tended to see it in terms of the creative tension between Joyce as a modernist aspiring to artistic universality, and Joyce as a native subject preoccupied with parochial identity. Such a tendency has mythically constructed Joyce as a metropolitan modernist. In countering this canonical formulation, this essay recontexualizes the question in terms of the psychological dynamics of national identification, by using Slavoj iek’s conceptualization of the nation as the “Nation-Thing.” To illustrate these dynamics, this paper uses the Stephen Dedalus of Ulysses. Even though Joyce cannot be directly identified with Stephen, the latter’s ambivalent relationship with Ireland may well, in a number of ways, mirror that of Joyce. Through a close reading of first three chapters of Ulysses, this paper argues, after iek, that Stephen’s relationship with Ireland, or his national identification, is sustained by a relationship toward “the Nation qua Thing.” Here, the Nation-Thingas a non-discursive entity like Lacan’s “the Real”exists outside language or the symbolic order, yet our access to it is only through a certain set of discursive practices, that is, a community’s “way of life” such as traditions, rituals and myths. This paradoxical nature of the Nation-Thingoscillating between absence and presencewould enable us to explore the dynamics of national identification without reducing the nation into a purely discursive artifact, and thereby to give a historical and psychological justification to Joyce/Stephen’s ambivalent relationship with Ireland.

Mimicking and Disrupting Binary Opposition - Salman Rushdie"s Midnight"s Children

Kyeong-Kyu Im(임경규) 한국영미어문학회 2007 영미어문학 Vol.- No.82

  This essay aims to read Salman Rushdie"s Midnight"s Children as a critique of the oppressive Hegelian binary logic, which is embedded in not only British colonial narratives but also dominant Indian nationalist thoughts and practices both before and after independence. Methodologically, I use what Homi Bhabha theorized as "mimicry," and interpret the novel as Rushdie"s strategic mimicking and mocking of the binary logic. This essay consists in two parts. In the first half, I examine Rushdie"s diasporic position and illuminate how his interstitial location as a writer enables him to deconstruct both Western hegemonic and Indian nationalist representation of India. As an India-born British writer, Rushdie has been criticized for his putative lack of ability to portray "authentic" India. Yet his lack of authenticity can rather be a sign that he can play with two ways of seeing - both insider"s and outsider"s, which allows him a discursive space in which he can rearticulate the oppressive binary logic imposed upon him by both Western hegemonic discourse and Indian nationalist narrative. In the second half, I closely read the opening part of the novel as allegorizing Indian bourgeois nationalists" nation-building. Rushdie"s allegorical description by and large repeats the Western hegemonic discourse, which, however, can be seen as a deliberate imitation that is meant to break down the duality of self and other, culminating in envisaging an alternative form of identity that transcends the rigid binary opposition.

The Symbolic Restoration of Human Labor: Duchamp`s Readymades

Kyeong Kyu Im 한국제임스조이스학회 2009 제임스조이스저널 Vol.15 No.1

Marcel Duchamp and his art have been discussed within the framework of art versus anti-art. What is problematic in this framework is that it is unable to illuminate the political aspect of Duchamp`s art in conjunction with the dominant social structure such as capitalism. This study, therefore, approaches Duchamp`s art, particularly, readymades, from a Marxist perspective and explicates its political potential. Here I would suggest that Duchamp`s readymades directly address the central contradictions of emerging bourgeois capitalism, that is, reification and consequent alienation of human labor. My conclusion is that Duchamp`s readymades provide a site in which human labor is restored in a symbolic way.

Always Transnationalize! : Towards Methodological Transnationalism in Asian American Studies

Kyeong-Kyu Im 21세기영어영문학회 2013 21세기영어영문학회 학술대회 Vol.2013 No.09

Anti-Semitism and the Racial Triangle in the Prioress's Tale : European Self, Asian Other, and Jewish Abject

Kyeong-Kyu Im 21세기영어영문학회 2007 영어영문학21 Vol.20 No.1

This essay aims at probing for a proper interpretation and understanding of anti-Semitism that is prevalent in Chaucer's Prioress's Tale in Canterbury Tales. So far, many critics have tackled the question of anti-Semitism and Chaucer's problematic treatment of Jews by introducing modern critical theories. However, my argument is that their interpretations by and large remain unsatisfactory or incomplete, mainly because their interpretive tools were founded upon the binary opposition between European Christians and Jews. Instead of this binary logic, therefore, I complicate the racial relationship in Medieval Europe by placing “Asia” on the position of the other of European Christians. We then have more complex racial model or what I would call “racial triangle”: European Christians, Asian Muslims, and Jews. Although the word “Asye” is the very first concrete noun of the tale, critics have paid little attention to it, only regarding it no more than a literary device of setting and exoticizing the story and possibly neutralizing anti-Semitism. Yet the critical survey of the historical development of Marian legends illuminates that Asia is not merely a setting for the story, but a primary signifier for an imaginary object of European desire for territorial expansion, or the absolute other against which European Christians identify themselves. The racial triangle is derived from Kristeva's psychoanalytic study on “abject.” By definition, “abject” is not an “object” or “the other” that exists outside the domain of the “subject.” It is part of the subject but something that must be purged out for the unity of identity - that is, the not-self within the self. In this model, Jews can be understood as part of European self but not quite. I conclude that anti-Semitism in the tale is a product of European Christians' historically overdetermined anxiety of the other (Asian Muslim) - that is, they attempt to master their fear of the other by abjecting Jews.

흑백버디무비와 아시아의 타자화

임경규(Kyeong-Kyu Im) 한국영미어문학회 2008 영미어문학 Vol.- No.87

The United States has recently witnessed old ""yellow perilism"" reemerging in anti-immigrant sentiment. Neil Gotanda has called this neo-yellow-perilism ""Asiatic racialization,"" a process characterized by ""[a] group of related yet distinct ideas - Asiatic unassimilability, the conflation of Asian Americans with Asian citizens, and the perception of Asians as a threat to the American nation."" Marginalization of Asian and Asian American people in the United States, however, cannot be reduced to a simple binary opposition between US and Asia; it is rather overdetermined by not only international power relations but also US"s domestic racial relations which have been historically constructed and inevitably connected with other problems such as race, gender and nation. This essay, therefore, will argue that Asian Americans and Asians have been and are being otherized and marginalized in American society by historically specific black-and-white racial logics of American nation. To do this, this essay will closely look at the narrative structure of American popular culture, especially, Hollywood black-white buddy movies such as Rising Sun (1993) and Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) in terms of what Brian Locke has defined as a figure of ""brinkmanship."" The figure of brinkmanship--predicated upon a black-and-white binary logic about American nation--is often ideologically employed by the dominant culture as a means of both incorporating African Americans into American nation while controling African Americans" claim for human rights. Yet such a binary logic has a dreadful impact on Asian and Asian American identity. Imagining America as a black-and-white nation requires any figure of an outside enemy threatening the unity of the nation. In many black-white buddie movies, Asian males have been constructed as the paradigmatic other-that against which the black-and-white America can in one way or another imagine its identity. The result is that Asians and Asian Americans have been constructed as eternal aliens in American popular culture.