Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T09:29:08.869Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Degrees of Difference: Rethinking the Transnational Turn in Korean Literary Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Extract

“Nothing,” Paul Jay writes in his recent work Global Matters: The transnational turn in literary studies, “has reshaped literary and cultural studies more than its embrace of transnationalism” (1). Certainly the shift toward a transnational model has been useful in mounting a critique of nation-based literary studies and in debunking the “natural” link among national identity, race, and language, challenging both the “hermeneutic preeminence of nations” and the “neutrality of comparison as a method” (Seigel 62–63). Combined with a postcolonial attentiveness to local or peripheral literary production and an expanded notion of agency, transnationalism works to designate “spaces and practices acted upon by border-crossing agents, be they dominant or marginal” (Lionnet and Shih 5) and to diversify the authors and texts available to students of literature, broadening curricula and the scope of literary studies (Jay 22). Those studying and teaching non-Western literatures might well find value in the challenge to the nation as the unquestioned context for the production and interpretation of literary works and in the healthy skepticism toward a supposedly neutral comparative method.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Appadurai, Arjun. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham: Duke UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Appiah, Anthony. “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race”. Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985): 2137. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balibar, Étienne. “Is There a ‘Neo-racism‘?” Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. Ed. Balibar, and Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. New York: Verso, 1991. 17–28. Print.Google Scholar
Réda, Bensmaïa. Experimental Nations; or, The Invention of the Maghreb. Trans. Waters, Alyson. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Ching, Leo. Becoming “Japanese”: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation. Berkeley: U of California P, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Ching, Leo. “Yellow Skin, White Masks: Race, Class, and Identification in Japanese Colonial Discourse.” Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. Ed. Chen, Kuan-Hsing. London: Routledge, 1998. 56–75. Print.Google Scholar
Chou, Wan-yao. “The Kōminka Movement in Taiwan and Korea: Comparisons and Interpretations.” The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945. Ed. Duus, Peter, Myers, Ramon H., and Peattie, Mark R. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996. 40–69. Print.Google Scholar
Chow, Rey. The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work. Durham: Duke UP, 2006. Print. Next Wave Provocations.Google Scholar
Chow, Rey. “The Old/New Question of Comparison in Literary Studies: A Post-European Perspective”. ELH 71.2 (2004): 289311. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dirlik, Arif. “Literature/Identity: Transnationalism, Narrative and Representation”. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 24.3 (2002): 209–34. Print.Google Scholar
Felski, Rita, and Friedman, Susan Stanford. Introduction. Comparison. Ed. Felski, and Friedman, . Spec. issue of New Literary History 40.3 (2009): vix. Print.Google Scholar
Hallward, Peter. Absolutely Postcolonial: Writing between the Singular and the Specific. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Hanscom, Christopher. “Kim Yuj⊖ng's ‘Thoughts from a Sickbed’ and the Critique of Empiricist Discourse”. Journal of Korean Studies 14.1 (2009): 3560. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Harootunian, Harry. History's Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life. New York: Columbia UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Harootunian, H. D., and Miyoshi, Masao. “The ‘Afterlife’ of Area Studies.” Introduction. Learning Places: The Afterlives of Area Studies. Ed. Harootunian, and Miyoshi, . Durham: Duke UP, 2002. 1–18. Print.Google Scholar
Henry, Todd. “Assimilation's Racializing Sensibilities: Colonized Koreans as Yobos and the ‘Yobo-ization’ of Japanese Settlers.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, forthcoming.Google Scholar
In Ch⊖ngsik. 內鮮一體의文化的理念 [A Cultural Doctrine of “Japan and Korea, Unified”]. 人文評論 [Liberal Arts Review] 1 Jan. 1940:47. Print.Google Scholar
Jay, Paul. Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010. Print.Google Scholar
Lionnet, Françoise, and Shih, Shu-mei. Introduction. Minor Transnationalism. Ed. Lionnet, and Shih, . Durham: Duke UP, 2005. 1–23. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loomba, Ania. “Race and the Possibilities of Comparative Critique”. New Literary History 40.3 (2009): 501–22. Print.Google Scholar
Osborne, Peter, and Sandford, Stella. Introduction. Philosophies of Race and Ethnicity. Ed. Osborne, and Sandford, . London: Continuum, 2002. 1–9. Print.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. “Globalizing Literary Study”. PMLA 116.1 (2001): 6468. Print.Google Scholar
Sakai, Naoki. “Nationality and the Politics of the ‘Mother Tongue.‘” Introduction. Deconstructing Nationality. Ed. Sakai, , de Bary, Brett, and Toshio, Iyotani. Ithaca: East Asia Program, 2005. 1–38. Print.Google Scholar
Sakai, Naoki. Translation and Subjectivity: On “Japan” and Cultural Nationalism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Seigel, Micol. “Beyond Compare: Comparative Method after the Transnational Turn”. Radical History Review 91 (2005): 6290. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shih, Shu-mei. “Global Literature and the Technologies of Recognition”. PMLA 119.1 (2004): 1630. Print.Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura. “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies”. Journal of American History 88.3 (2001): 829–65. Print.Google Scholar
Yi Chingy⊖ng. 식민지 인민은 말할 수 없는가?: ‘동아신질서론‘과 조선의 지식인 [Can the Colonized Not Speak? The “New East Asian Order” and Korean Intellectuals]. 사회와 역사 [Society and History] 71 (2006): 348.Google Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. “Tolerance as an Ideological Category”. Critical Inquiry 34.4 (2008): 660–82. Print.Google Scholar