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Co-Reading in Webtoon platform and its political aesthetic possibilities

KEONHYUNG KIM 1

1육군사관학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Webtoon, an art of the web and smartphones, is different from the usual publishing culture in that readers decide an author's debut and her work's publication. This stems from the fact that the webtoon's platform allows for the juxtaposition of her work and her readers' comments. This paper focuses on how webtoon's co-reading, which takes into account the readings of others, gives rise to a politico-aesthetic effect similar to the emotional aspect of the pre-modern form of common reading that so often has provided a sense of community. In order to focus on the political aesthetics of the form of reading enabled by the webtoon platform, this paper looks at the politico-aesthetic nature of diarytoon's reader-author communication, which shapes and shares the process of the author's as well as readers' identity formation. To that end, this paper looks at three works: <나는 귀머거리다>, whose readers correct their own initial reading that viewed disabilities as something either to be pitied or to be awed, <모두에게 완자가>, whose author shared how her gender politics evolved by communicating with her readers about her ordinary experience as a sexual minority, and <이게 뭐야>, whose author resisted the readers' demand as to how the other should be represented, tried to crack its assimilated representation, and ultimately put it in a positive light. All this shows that the webtoon platform induces active reader-reader as well as reader-author engagement, showing it to be a place where the work is created and read at the same time. With respect to webtoon’s platform and co-reading, this paper shall emphasize its mutually communicatory feature as a form of media and its effect. Furthermore, it will be shown that webtoon with above mentioned features could elevate hitherto unknown ordinary experience of the other into a political matter.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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