KJC Korea
Journal Central

The critiques on liberalism in Korea only take into account a unilateral aspect, dismissing the diversity of liberalism. In this circumstance, the new liberalism that appeared in England in the late eighteenth century is able to serve as a new alternative in Korea. New liberalism presents a framework for Korea that facilitates a free market economy and an advanced welfare state.

Bruno Latour has proposed the concepts of “politics of nature” and “parliament of things” to characterize the new relationship between humanity and nature “after humanism” and the modern era. We demonstrate here the consistency and plausibility of this program, beyond its provocative appearance. First, in order to reconcile men and things, men and nature, it is necessary to attenuate the conceptual oppositions that divide them, foremost among which is the opposition between the “subject” and the “object,” or the “active” and the “passive.” According to Latour’s theory of action (inspired by French philosopher Étienne Souriau), things are not merely passive, but can also “act” in a somewhat circular intercourse with men: Men are the products of things they make as well as things are the products of men’s activity. Then if, strictly speaking, things do not speak, they can nevertheless “speak” with men, through their respective “spokesmen” (scientists and politicians).

In this article, I will provide some reflections concerning the question which concept of human perfection can be seen as plausible. I will progress as follows. I will deal with three types of perfection which are currently particularly relevant within academic bioethical debates: Moral sainthood, the Renaissance ideal and authenticity. I will dedicate one section to each of these types of perfection. Furthermore, each type of perfection will be presented within a historical as well as in a contemporary philosophical framework. In each section, I will initially focus on a historical figure who upholds the type of perfection in question, as thereby the related challenges come out best, because their anthropologies have already been dealt with in detail by many scholars. In the second part of each section, I will focus on a contemporary figure who upholds a similar position. By critically presenting each of the various types of perfection, it will become clearer which concept of human perfection can be seen as most plausible.

In the age of digital reproduction, each work is meant to be literally translated onto various interfaces be it through a common structuring language such as XML or emulated, and therefore transcoded, which may affect its instantiation. Code always casts a long shadow on the observer as it cannot be observed in the here and now of its performance. It lines the visible and readable surface of the work while remaining at a distance, withdrawn from the reader’s gaze by an invisible interface meant to mediate it as a system of signs. Hence Donna Haraway’s appeal to the figure of what I will redefine as the oppositional translating cyborg who seizes upon the encoding tools that mark the world to write her own hybrid or creolized version, undermining the metaphysical fantasy of a universal language, interrupting communication by drawing our attention to the “interface effect.” The interface, as a buffer, or a translating device between two informational systems, has become the prevalent paradigm for the delineation of the limits of our world. In other words, rewriting Wittgenstein’s aphorism, one may make the following statement: the limits of my interface are the limits of my world. I will address these questions focusing on the metaphysics of interface and its relationship to natural language, computer code, and prosthetic data bodies in Illya Szilak’s “Internet novel of the future” entitled Reconstructing Mayakovsky (2008), Ben Marcus’s print novel entitled The Flame Alphabet (2012) and a few instances of Giselle Beiguelman’s electronic poetry.

This essay is an attempt to uncover the nature of the interface between the literary and the scientific in a fictional discourse. In so doing, it focuses on an anecdote in Charles Brockden Brown’s second novel Ormon; or, The Secret Witness (1799), in which the father of the novel’s heroine Constantia, Stephen Dudley, loses his sight but recovers it soon. The paper points out that this most curious, though unexplored, event is interlinked with various discourses that were bred in the Enlightenment period. Almost all of the critics have long ignored the fact that Dudley’s blindness has a distinct cause: a cataract. First, the paper tries to show, based on pathology, that the opening events in the novel and the progress of a cataract in Dudley’s eyes are paralleled. Second, it discusses the peculiar feature of the anecdote: the operation on the cataract. According to contemporary sources, there were two methods of cataract operation — depression and extraction — available in the Early Republic. Examination of these sources and Brown’s description proves that the method described in the novel is extraction, the advanced medical technology of the age, which can radically cure the blindness caused by cataracts. This is notable because Ormond, who helps remove Dudley’s cataract by calling a doctor, could be the object of removal in view of the US political situation. Ormond, who is a member of Illuminati, a secret society bred in the Enlightenment, has enough reason to be the “evil” that should be expelled immediately from the United States due to the enforcement of Alien Laws in 1799. Therefore, the fact that the person who should be removed helps remove a cataract critiques the Federalist policy. Thus, the two frameworks of reference — medical treatment and political thought — encounter at an anecdote in Ormond, which successfully contrives the interface between the literary and the scientific with a political resonance.

Translations of non-Western works introduce other cultures to the Western world. Translation is understood to be an act of rewriting/creation, which plays a role in promoting the source language and culture. Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North is a Sudanese Arab-African novel, translated into English. From a postcolonial perspective, reading the novel in translation does not convey the qualities of the original work to the Western reader. The translation is rather a reconstitution of the text mediated by the differences in the culture of the target language and this determines the relationship between dominant and subordinate cultures through “transculturation.” This paper also addresses the question of whether the translation of literature conveys a true cultural presentation of the other, or whether the translator, in postcolonial discourse, acts as a colonizer of the text, a space open to colonization.

Siddhartha Deb’s novel The Point of Return (2002) is a nuanced study of the fractured relationship between an indigenous tribal people and Bengali migrants in the undivided state of Assam, and the exilic condition of these migrants in the Northeast of India (especially in Assam and Meghalaya). It also shows the painful process of cartographic reconfigurations of state boundaries along ethnic lines, and the resultant violence, uprootedness, alienation, and continued memory of loss. The paper seeks to investigate how the writer traces the lives of the first generation migrants who came to the new land in search of a better life but were condemned to live precarious lives in their adopted homeland. The novel is also about the post-partition generation who inherited the memory of their parents and grandparents and had to negotiate their own sense of belonging and identity in the face of ethnic assertion by indigenous people in the eastern borderland region. The legacy of this conflict lives on in the Northeast as the post-partition generation continues to grapple with issues like displacement, cultural confrontation, and homelessness. At the same time, we have examined how Deb utilizes the mode of memory to tell his story of migrancy and the trauma of loss and dislocation. The act of remembering, the urge to recall and revisit the historical loss, fracture, and trauma, are insistent in the text even as it grapples with issues like home, identity, citizenship, and belonging in the postcolonial nation-state.

Sherman Alexie’s 2007 young adult fiction, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part- Time Indian, depicts the life of a young Spokane Indian boy named Arnold Spirit Jr., and the writer tries to show how this young protagonist deals with his identity issues both on the reservation and at a white school. Off the poor reservation where limitations make him a loser, he needs to balance his Indian identity and agency with the white American identity he has come into contact with. The final answer, outcome, or resolution of his long search and struggle is to become a nomad (an old-time Indian way of life) or to become Nomad (an alternative superhero identity of Captain America). Following Junior’s track, Alexie implies that there should be a new form of identity for the young generation, because obviously there is none, for them, available now. Giving them a reachable, accessible form of identity and heroic figure would lead young readers like Junior to dreams of being someone important.

This study examines the potential for wide-ranging interpretation that was already latent within the textual makeup of Metamorphosis. This potential was read or understood through its interaction with the reader’s real world context to reveal how an event as extraordinary as Gregor Samsa’s transformation can entail an element of realism. The signified aspect of the verminous insect can be seen as an extension of hatred against Jews as Gregor’s supernational transformation was closely tied to the anti-Semitism that spread across Europe during the time Metamorphosis was written. However, when adopted in a different time and space, it is most likely to be accepted as a fantastical tale that defies all rules of nature, a story that is simply “unrealistic.” At the same time, it could also be seen as unrealistic yet possible when the reader’s real world context conflates Jews who were the Other of Kafka’s time and other communities that are considered as the Other in the reader’s contemporary perspective. The implications drawn here are expected to contribute to the study of comparative literature of Kafka’s fantastic stories and the way they are being adopted in similar or varying forms. Keywords: Kafka’s Metamorphosis, vermin motif,