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Mythical Biopolitics and the Affective Geographies of Sanctuary - A Decolonial Historicization of Bear Mythology in East Asia

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2026, 32(1), pp.91~135
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2026.32.1.003
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : January 10, 2026
  • Accepted : February 14, 2026
  • Published : February 28, 2026

Doohyun Kwon 1

1연세대학교 비교사회문화연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Settler colonialism produces a specific mode of biopolitics that persists not only within settler states but also within global regimes that inherit, expand, and naturalize their power. This biopolitical mode often manifests as an affective modulation of multispecies power relations encompassing both humans and nonhumans. The space in which such modulation materializes most vividly is the sanctuary. To locate the sanctuary within the cartography of settler-colonial biopolitics, this paper compares two works set in different historical and geographical contexts—Noda Satoru’s manga Golden Kamuy and Ko Yeon-ok’s play The Sensibility of a Wife. Through these works, it examines how human–animal interactions signify the (re)formation of settler-colonial affective geographies, particularly in relation to the process of making a sanctuary. Golden Kamuy presents the possibility of multispecies coexistence through the re-narration of an Ainu bear myth; however, once that myth is appropriated within the settler narrative, its decolonial potential becomes absorbed into the institutional order. In contrast, The Sensibility of a Wife depicts a world in which the affect of the “penitentiary farm” extends to society at large, where care and control overlap within a violent regime and the sensibility of rewilding is enacted. While the former illustrates a “multispecies coexistence through incorporation,” the latter envisions “coexistence through refusal.” Through this contrast, the paper argues that myth and sanctuary form a cyclical structure of historical memory and affective practice, functioning as two axes of decolonial thought that disrupt the order of colonial biopolitics. Furthermore, it explores the transformative politics of interspecies solidarity that emerges from affective reconfigurations in which humans and animals, indigeneity and coloniality, settlement and movement intertwine.

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