KJC Korea
Journal Central

This article examines the process by which Hyeon Chae (玄采), who had been a yeokgwan (譯官) in Joseon, emerged as a modern intellectual through his works on foreign book translation and textbook compilation. Hyeon worked at the Hakbu (學部) as a translator and compiler of textbooks after the 1894 Kabo Reforms. He did not limit himself to performing a passive role as a government official. Hyeon has been concerned about the organization of textbooks and worked to give new meaning to his translation work within the context of his times. He translated foreign books for the purpose of educating people and ultimately making the Daehan Empire a rich and powerful independent nation. Hyeon’s consciousness and knowledge which have accumulated through translations manifest clearly in the Yunyeonpildok(幼年必讀), an introductory textbook for children and the general public. Hyeon attempted to organize the material in a clear and straightforward manner suitable for the level of children or those new to modern education. He intended to evoke people’s patriotism through various contents in this book. Hyeon also recognized the necessity of industrial and scientific education in reaching the goal of building a rich, powerful, and independent nation, Hyeon Chae, who had been a lower level official in the premodern era, transformed himself into an active modern intellectual who would lead the introduction, processing, and circulation of modern knowledge through translation.

In the history of Korea, and also in the history of various discourses such as those of the sciences and literature, the Japanese occupation in 1910 is a big turning point. The discourse system before this turn and the system after it can be contrasted with each other. The present paper attempts to apply to the Korean scenario two discourse theories for the analysis of historical turns. It should be emphasized that only exemplary insights are given here. The first theory is by Michel Foucault. His Order of Things analyzes the pivotal moment about 1800 and contrasts the discourse system of Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries with that of the 19th and 20th centuries. The world was understood in the former through a tabular scheme, as in an encyclopedia, but in the latter, the world was understood according to the time axis, as in human sciences. This contrast can be compared with the contrast of the Korean discourse systems before and after the Japanese occupation. In the former, besides Confucianism, the principle of the spatial comprehension of the world was dominant. However, in the latter, the comprehension of the world was according to the timeline through human sciences, which were introduced from the West and Japan. The second theory is by Friedrich Kittler. His Discourse Networks 1800/1900 analyzes the historical turn around 1900 and emphasizes the materiality of literary discourses post– 1900. The same can also be observed in the literature by the Korean Yi Sang, especially in the translation of his Japanese works into Korean.

This essay explores the surprising relationship between what Simone de Beauvoir calls the will to disclose being and what Friedrich Nietzsche calls the will to power. I argue that the will to disclose being is an appropriation of the will to power in Nietzsche. Both terms suggest an image of the ethical, the irreducible and unpredictable element of valuation necessary to all life, which does not require a concept of the human. Both the will to disclose being and the will to power affirm that bodies are subject to the power of non– volitional valuation, and this is what motivates the critique in both Beauvoir and Nietzsche of the will to morality as social critique. The essay proceeds in three parts. In the first part I demonstrate that it is unclear whether Beauvoir intended the will to disclose being as an appropriation of the will to power. The second part articulates the will to disclose being as the mutual disclosure of inherently relational singularities. The relational nature of the will to disclose being is a response to what Beauvoir calls the “bare will to power.” However, as I discuss in part three, this bare will to power in fact resembles what Nietzsche himself deplores. My conclusion is thus that Beauvoir’s will to disclose being forwards the relational nature of the will to disclose being/will to power but is too strongly an implicit appropriation of the will to power to be considered a rejection of the will to power itself.

This paper aims at understanding the phenomenon of working class subjective growth through two British working class autobiographies of the middle and late 20th century. It seeks to chart the relationship between the cultural aspects of class–based identity through the contesting and allied concepts of habitus (Pierre Bourdieu) and “structure of feeling” (Raymond Williams) on the one hand, and the more revolutionary potentials of class–consciousness on the other. While the term “structure of feeling” expresses a generation–specific temporal unconscious, habitus is tied to a more spatial system of dispositions. While these terms delineate the possibility of the working class as subject in capitalism, the empirical proof from the autobiographies suggests that the attributes of this subjectivity may be the function of capital more than individual consciousness or a will to truth. Winnicott’s concept of the transitional object and the playing subject (seen as the apogee of creative humanity) is then used as the limit concept to demonstrate the hindering of subjectivity in capitalism. This lack of subjectivity or negative subjectivity could become the constellation that points beyond capitalism.

Korean women’s religio–aesthetic spirituality, reshaping the theological framework, has creatively grasped the “in–between” reality repressed within the Western dualistic divisions of “one and the other.” On this basis, this article attempts to reactivate the in–between characteristics in special terms of the incarnate presence of the divine and the embodiment of women. In this vein, grappling with the “(m)other” erased and effaced in the conventional theological discourses, I reconstruct a theological appropriation of the in–betweenness as a transformative and creative space of redemption for ethnic Asian and Korean women. The “other–sensitive” spirituality reenacts the compassionate presence of incarnate God, retrieving the repressed bodiliness and “(m)other.” Here, the bridge I am reinforcing between theology and other theoretical findings allows me both to criticize the conventional doctrines and to pursue a possibility of women’s experience of an infinite effect of God. This attempt to theologize the in–between space describes the permeably relatedness of the divine to the non–divine and further steers the direction of future feminist theology so that Korean women can tenaciously envision their struggle and hope.

This essay is a rhetorical analysis of the lyrics of, arguably, one of the greatest minds in music – Tupac Shakur. In general terms, this piece evaluates the ways in which oppressed communities manifest resistance toward the established power; issues of race, class, and power are taken into consideration. Through an examination of the lyrical component of Tupac Shakur’s Me Against the World, there is an attempt to uncover critical knowledge regarding the ways in which communication and culture are managed among the young American underclass. The essential elements are as follows: (1) the value of empathetic understanding; (2) the value of communalism; and (3) the attribute of oppression/paranoia. These rhetorical tenets are essential in the preparation and design of messages being constructed for members of the underclass and members of outside the community. Tupac is used a symbol for the disenfranchised urban voice. Through greater understanding of both the contemporary challenges urban youth face and the philosophical principles that guide their rhetoric, the academic conversation regarding communication and culture among marginalized communities is further advanced.

This essay examines and compares the various renditions of the story of Madame Butterfly, ranging from the narrative found in Pierre Loti’s Mme. Chrysanthème, the John Luther Long short story (Mme. Butterfly), David Belasco’s play (Mme. Butterfly), Puccini’s opera (Madama Butterfly), and finally David Henry Hwang’s dramatic subversion of this story of ill–fated love and betrayal in M. Butterfly. In recent years, Hwang’s play has become a canonical work in the canon of multicultural literature in the US. The author investigates how Hwang’s treatment of race and gender supports this pedagogy and the identity politics currently fashionable in literature departments in American academe.

Over the last thirty years in most advanced liberal democracies, the public criticism of the Humanities has been increasing and a largely negative consensus has emerged, especially among right–wing and populist political parties, that the Humanities are not financially viable, that they are a luxurious hobby for the privileged few and that they do not deserve public funding. In this article I will first contextualize this debate in the larger frame of the question about the role and function of the university in the Twenty–first century. I will subsequently go on to argue a case for the relevance of the “new” Humanities, which I refer to as “Posthumanities.” My general hypothesis is simple: the Humanities can and will survive their present predicament and contradictions to the extent that they will show the ability and willingness to undergo a major process of transformation in response to both new technological advances and on–going geo–political developments. We need schemes of thought and figurations that enable us to account in empowering terms for the changes and transformations currently under way. More importantly, we need a new definition of our subjectivity in the direction of posthumanist and postanthropocentric perspectives. In the main section of this paper I will give you some concrete examples of new trends in what I have called the “Posthumanities.”