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We divide the world into almost infinite numbers of the ontological categories of things such as mind and body, mountain and ocean, the solid and the liquid, the animate and the inanimate, frog and toad, male and female, and so on, as if these divisions were metaphysically fixed and eternal just like the Platonic Ideas. But as the Hindus have already known all along, the Brahman refers to the single indivisible totality of all things in the universe and is identical with the infinite numbers of individual realities referred to as Atman, and since the beginning of the 20th century, quantum mechanics has shown that reality is more like a chaotic Rorschach’s inkblot in constant motion, indivisible and fluid, one single realty only open to be divided into the kinds of things that we humans like according to our particular needs and our convenience at a particular occasion. Although ontologically the reality of the universe is one, conceptually and thus artificially, it is disposed to be divided into an infinite number. So it is with the nature of the academic division itself as well as with its origins. The academic division between the humanities and the sciences, between philosophy and literature, for instance, is not ontologically founded, not really real, but only conceptual, i.e., artificially and thus temporarily invented by humans for epistemological reasons, i.e., practical reasons in order to cope better with our daily world. The more the world becomes developed and thus complicated, the more the numbers of academic divisions grow. And as the numbers are increasing, knowledge about the world has become fragmented, partial, myopic, and confused. This is what explains for recent fashionable call for academic unity, “consilience,” “fusion,” epistemological holism, and warnings about the crisis of the human sciences. But these warnings and calls for the fusion of different academic divisions remain empty unless we first clearly understand the semantic meaning of the unity, fusion, and consilience of the academic disciplinary divisions and its practical as well as its logical feasibility. Most people seem to believe that the best candidate for such as possibility rests with science. My views are (a) that the academic fusion as usually understood is either nonsensical or very hard, and (b) that it is the humanities, philosophy in particular rather than science, that can be the final candidate for such a task. For the scientific view of the world, which considers itself to be the only objective view, is one of many other human, hence, subjective conceptual construction.

The main purpose of this research is to explore the conceptualization process of Korean “boundary” expressions using a cognitive semantics approach. In Chapter 2, I examine the locations and markers of “boundary.” The extracted linguistic examples from the KAIST Corpus and the Sejong Corpus are divided into the two different types: “the boundary of A” and “the boundary between A and B.” It is shown that boundary markers could be tangible objects such as “fence” or “tree” and abstract concepts like “time” or “event” as well. In Chapter 3, I explicate the existing patterns of “boundary” by searching such expressions as “X-verb the boundary” or “The boundary is X-verb.” The results were classified into the 4 different types: a boundary to be set, a boundary that exists, a boundary that changes, and a boundary to be rejected. Specific examples are given and discussed for each type. In the final chapter, metaphorical expressions are investigated in regard to the concept of “boundary” itself. Conceptual metaphors of a “boundary” in the Korean language seem to appear in different patterns, as follows: [a boundary is a concrete object], which can be built, broken, established, shaken, and smashed; [a boundary is a line], which can be pictured and erased; [a boundary is a place], which can be traversed and invaded; [a boundary is a subject of experience], which can be felt and experienced. This paper is one of cognitive semantics studies based on the everyday Korean language. Its significance lies in the fact that the conceptualization process of the “boundary” expressions were examined using the corpus data. I hope this research will contribute to the contemporary humanistic approaches that deal with the boundary phenomenon.

In this paper, I propose a new model for the possibility of equality in communication, and attempt to develop humanistic ideas about it. With regard to matters of communication, there is a theoretical project to secure the normativity of communication relying on universality in language activity, on the one hand, but there is criticism from the social sciences that emphasis on universal normativity may be too idealy, tic and give rise to an illusion of communication concealyng the existing inequality, on the other hand. The science of communication has analyzed and described precisely the causes of inequality from a critical viewpoint. Another approach to the matter of communication is to pursue economic equality based on the image of family or of one body, and thereby to secure equality in communication. However, such an image makes difficult the prevention of totalitarian hierarchization and closedness of community. Against such, the ethics of the Other or the ethic of hospitality is also proposed, but such proposals tend to restrict the matter to the realm of ethics, excluding a political approach.

Much as translation is not a simple linguistic transcoding but a kind of cultural interpretation and criticism after the process of cultural contact and cultural hybridization, both new and old media invoke the twin logic of immediacy and hypermediacy in their efforts to remake themselves and each other as they seek to reaffirm their status within our culture. And new digital media oscillate between immediacy and hypermediacy, between transparency and opacity. This oscillation is the key to understanding the logic of remediation of mediums. This paper is proposing the possibility of the equivalency between the translation/cultural translation arguments and the logic of remediation of mediums or media. The myth for pure language, a kind of origin that the translators aim for but fail to attain, can be assumed to be similar to the desire for transparent immediacy in both remediation in that both are inherently impossible to reach. And the new potential possibility for cultural translation emerging from the in-between space where cultural encounter and transculturation happen can also be related to the potentiality in remediation in terms of remediation as refashining and reform. This kind of potentiality can open up a new emancipatory possibility of our reality.

Since the introduction of digital technology to our society after the 1990s, the so-called “convergence” phenomenon, that is the fusion among media, or among contents, is becoming universalized. This convergence phenomenon has particular relevance to the advent of computers among current digital technologies. The encounter of such individual media as photography, film, and television, which have independently existed, and computers used for calculating has given birth to the true meaning of convergence. Through the invention of printing technology in the 15th century, the emergence of photography in the 19th century, and the birth of cinema in the 20th century, we can see that the emergence of a new medium has influenced its cultural reception as well as the structure of human consciousness. On the basis of these phenomena, this article gives a historical analysis of the emergence of new media and examines how new media have changed and developed the structure of human consciousness and the mode of cultural reception in terms of media theory. This article is divided largely into four parts. The first part explicates the concept of convergence, which becomes universalized due to the introduction of digital technology. The second part explores the emergence of new media and the subsequent changes in human perceptions by focusing on Discourse Networks, 1800/1900 , written by Friedrich Kittler, a German media theorist. The third part investigates how the emergence of the computer as a new medium has transformed human perceptions and its cultural reception by focusing on The Language of New Media , written by Lev Manovich, an American media theorist. The forth part explains Human and Cultural Transformation in the Digital Era.

Kim Yu-Na not only inspired many Koreans to become unified in pride by winning the figure skating gold medal in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics Games, she played an important role in promoting Korea. This article attempts to redefine and reconstruct Kim’s sociocultural value in the context of the humanities. In other words, it aims to answer the following question from the perspective of the humanities: “Why are Koreans so enthusiastic about Kim Yu-Na and her artistic performance?” Through the art of her sport, Kim Yu-Na instigated the idea of “pushing beyond the boundary” and became a role model for many people throughout the world. Based on such a supposition, the author will analyze the Kim Yu-Na Syndrome using the idea of “pushing beyond the boundary.” This category of “pushing beyond the boundary” here deals with only three fields in the Trans-Humanities, Human Korea-Project by the Ewha Institute of Humanities: locality, gender, and multimedia. However, I do not expect to render a complete academic study on the Kim Yu-Na Syndrome in this article. I wish to examine effective methods for basic research from various points of view. I am certain that when Humanities broadens its horizon to the contemporary cultural phenomena such as the research in this paper, the social value of the humanities and their benefit will develop and expand.

Do nations really lose their power and influence through globalization? It cannot be denied that the fierce movement of capital accumulation and the necessity of response at a transnational level diminish the power of a nation’s status. But the power of a nation doesn’t weaken at all in control and influence with respect to people’s migration. When migrants leave their homeland to start new lives in another country, how possible is choosing one’s vocation according to their one’s ability? This article selects the oral life histories of 4 Chosun-tribe individuals and 5 Korean Americans, whom I interviewed extensively to show the influence of homeland on the migrants’ socio economic status. There are three reasons why I selected Chosun-tribe individuals and Korean Americans as research subjects. They make up most of the migrants involved in Korea. Second, Chosun-tribe individuals, who have lived as a powerless ethnic minority in China and migrate to their ancestral homeland, and Korean Americans, who immigrated to America as the Third World individuals in the 1970s, can be shown to have been the same sort of unskilled workforce and to have had the same sort of low-class social status. Third, both Chosun-tribe individuals and Korean Americans who have come back to Korea for marriage or job constitute the same sort of return migration. Even though they constitute the same sort of return migration, Korea’s treatment of them is significantly different. This research shows that what job the migrants have and what social status they take are determined by the political and economic status of the homeland.

This paper explores the characteristics of the returned Korean adoptees’ beyond-borders identities with the possibility of their becoming transnational hybrid citizen subjects. Transnational Korean adoptees are a unique group of overseas Koreans because they have experienced separation from their Korean birth families and been raised in most white families and communities. Transnational adoptee networks constitute a unique and ultramodern global community transcending the limitations of geographical boundaries, meeting at gatherings and through the Internet, mostly using English. Moreover, about 500 transnational Korean adoptees have returned to Korea for the settlement by now, searching for their cultural identities in Korean society. But, their trials to “embrace Koreanness” through going back home do not offer a comfortable experience at all. Rather, visiting and resettling in Korea, meeting the birth family, especially meeting the birth mother, are understandably very difficult for one who has a white identity, which is the only identity that they have experienced so far. Thus, their experiences of national, cultural, and racial identities are varied and shifting. Recent changes to Korean immigration law concerning the F4 visa allows the returned transnational adoptees to live and work in Korea for indefinite periods of time. Embracing transnational Korean adoptees as economically and culturally “Korean” citizens includes them among the newest groups of “flexible citizens,” reflecting their ambivalent struggle for the practice of transnational hybrid citizenship and the sense of belonging; born in one culture, raised in another, they cannot wholly accept one and wholly reject the other.

This article aims for an examination of animation, which is considered deeply connected with cartoons and the cinema, and searches for common features among these three things. These three media can be summarized as “serial images of the narrativity”. Meanwhile, we can define animation through the following sentence: The art that handles the invisible gap between one frame and another frame, and also deals with “the drawn motion” without drawing the motion. Animation established an identical aesthetic domain between the cartoon and the cinema, covering both sides. This article focuses on this point, that the process of animation makes for creative results between the two media. Each side of the above-mentioned “borders” also has interesting features in the process. This article therefore tries to explain the creative form between frames, and also inspects for the “morphological flexibility” that occurs in the “liminal space” by analysing two animations by Georges Schwizgebel (1944~), a Swiss animation director: La jeune fille et les nuages(2000) and L’homme sans ombre (2004). Schwizgebel has studied “Metamorphosis” (especially in animation, it means the transformation of shape) for 30 years and created 14 remarkable works. Here is a simple example of metamorphosis: A woman’s dress changes gradually into a cloud. In live-action movies, only a digital post-process can make such a progression. But in animation, it can be made by drawing multiple images that gradually change one image into another image. This gradual interconnecting is one of the unique things about animation. The meanings of metamorphosis are created by the relationship between a frame and the one following it. Meanwhile, Schwizgebel has paid special attention to “inter-frame-constructed descriptions” of shape. The meaning of an independent frame is not important, but only the meaning finally reached through serially arranged images. The style of Schwizgebel’s work in realizing metamorphosis ultimately results in producing the flexibility of a shape. This article summarizes that process of metamorphosis that constructs the aesthetic filling the liminal spaces between borders. The isolated images usually present fragmentary values, but the images unified by metamorphosis can create many other varied values, so his animations can be considered as unusually creative works.

From consideration of the historical context and the sociocultural aspects of the WorldWideWeb (WWW) and the early conceptual model of the laptop computer, I examine the nexus of intercommunication, writing (hyper-)text, and the concept of meta-media. WWW, which pervasively influences current ordinary social life and was first invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire ).CERN,foundedastheintegratedresearchinstitutefor European particle physics, had very complicated organization schemes and hence demanded a profoundly new way of intercommunication between physicists as well as between technicians in the 1980s. I discuss the effort of Tim Berners-Lee that resulted from that need for intercommunication. Also, I describe the effort toward realizing the new concept of the laptop computer, especially Dynabook, which was invented by Alan Kay at PARC(Palo Alto Research Center) in the 1970s. Based on the historical development of WWW and Dynabook, I examine critically the scheme of remediation and make clear the notion of meta-media.

In this paper, I examine the concept of community on the ontological level. The central theses of ontological theory on community, such as “inoperative community” (Nancy), “the coming community” (Agamben), and “the community of those who have nothing in common” (Lingis), can be summarized as follows: “It is where the community is not that the community is.” While these arguments emphasize ontological communality at the expense of communities in real life, I accentuate the dimension of the actual in the theorization of community. I argue that we can properly think of the virtual or ontological dimension of community only through trying to conjure up communities at the actual level. At the root of this conceptualization of community is the Spinozist thesis that the individual is formed through the process of individualization and that the individual is an assemblage of many “dividuals.” While we define commun-ity (the concept of community) as the process of individualization that unites multiple heterogeneous components, we define singularity as the process of bringing heterogeneous singular points together. In Deleuzean terms, the former becomes the “content” of community, whereas the latter take on its “expression.” The central thesis of this article is to examine the problem of the interiority and outsideness of community through these two concepts, i.e., “commun-ity” and “singularity.”

This study aims to reveal some things in common and differences in a psychological matter, that are analyzed in the whereabouts of a hero in Émmanuel Carrère’s novel Adversary and of a heroine in Ozon’s film Under the Sand. In particular, two main characters show tendencies of regression and fixation, so they are not free from a libido object in their past. In terms of the root cause of this psychology of reality denial that stops them from advancing toward life’s next step, its prototype already exists in the unconscious structure that is the reparation of the damage and frustration for a childishly loved object or the defense against the anxiety of being deprived. This unconscious psychological structure is due to the frustration of the mouth and lips represented by a weaned child and the anal frustration represented by the study of cleanness, and an Oedipus tendency is generated from this. This occurs at three to five years, according to Sigmund Freud, and around the end of one year or at the beginning of two years, according to Melanie Klein. This period corresponds to the characteristics of the pre-genital phase that are common to baby girl and baby boy. A boy mixes the desire to have a baby and an awareness of a loving tendency due to the feminine complex encountered by a baby boy. Therefore, the feelings about his own disadvantage are hidden, and he tries to overcompensate by the sense of superiority derived from the fact that “I have a penis.” This point is an unconscious structure e euated on the hidden e de of a hero’s lie and fraud. On the other hand, a masculine tendency that consists of one’s own overestimation is not observed in a heroine. Instead, the heroine’s behavior is characterized by complexity and confusion; ambiguous and uncertain emotion; and illusion and feelings built around one’s own world and internal objects.