THE TRANSNATIONAL-TRANSLATIONAL MODERNITY: LANGUAGE AND SEXUALITY IN COLONIAL TAIWAN AND KOREA A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Pei Jean Chen May 2016 Copyright © 2016 Pei Jean Chen ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE TRANSNATIONAL-TRANSLATIONAL MODERNITY: LANGUAGE AND SEXUALITY IN COLONIAL TAIWAN AND KOREA Pei Jean Chen, Ph. D Cornell University 2016 Dissertation Abstract This dissertation seeks to examine the modern construction of language and sexuality in colonial Taiwan and Korea. It takes a transnational approach to present a circuit of colonial modernity that differs substantially from that assumed by conventional colonial history, which focuses on a uni- directional impact from imperial powers. In particular, Taiwan and Korea are perceived as cultural entities through their vertical relations with their imperial pasts, and segregated from each other as the “unimagined communities.” This research argues that the idea of “unimagined communities” enables a political engagement to examine and challenge the grounds for nationalist imagination; and this “unimagined communities” are not just as the communities that are beyond national boundaries, but also as those that are internal to Taiwanese or Korean society. In advancing this argument, this research tracks the processes of transnational exchange and translational shaping of the modern concepts of national language and literature, as well as romantic love and sexual desires in early twentieth-century Taiwan and Korea. By theorizing and historicizing the construction of modern ideas of language and sexuality, this research challenges the imperialist and nationalistic hegemonies with the notion of “untranslatability” in colonial linguistic and literary practices, and the “critical love” against the normative idea supporting intimate relationships in nation-building. These arguments are supported by the result of the investigation on considerable primary materials, including the novels and writings by literary icons of Taiwan and Korea, as well as numerous public debates and discussions from renowned newspapers and literary magazines in the colonial era. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Pei Jean Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She received her Master of Arts in 2006, from the Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. After earning her MA, she worked as a full- time editor at a publishing house in 2007, and then a weekly newspaper in 2008. In 2010, she began her doctoral studies at Cornell. Pei Jean has spent approximately a decade in the fields of Taiwan and South Korea, and speaks and reads Mandarin, Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese. In the May of 2016, she received her PhD in the field of Asian Literature, Religion, and Culture from Cornell University. Her research and commentary appear in Bulletin of Taiwanese Literature, Journal of Taiwan Literary Studies, ARTCO, Pots Weekly and Culture Studies Monthly in Taiwan. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without the generous support from my teachers, colleagues, friends, and family. I am deeply indebted to my chair, Naoki Sakai, for his indispensable contribution to the field of translation and transnational studies, and for his guidance, that has helped me in believing and completing this research project. I would like to express my very great appreciation to my committee members: Brett de Bary, Natalie Melas, and Petrus Liu, for inspiring me with their insightful studies on translation, modernity, comparative studies, and sexuality. Each of them set a standard of scholarly and personal excellence I strive to meet. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to many other Cornell faculty members that I have worked with in the first three years of course works. I thank Edward Gunn, Claudia Verhoeven, Lucida Ramberg, Saida Hodzic, Ellie Choi, and Yongwoo Lee, who have been of great help in many ways in shaping my research project. Thank to Stephanie Divo, Robert Sukle, Frances Yufen Lee Mehta, Song Meejeong, and Park Kyeongmin, for their passion and devotion for language teaching that I have greatly benefited from working and learning with them. I would like to express my deep gratitude to various scholars in South Korea and Taiwan: Prof. Kim Eun-shil of the Department of Women’s Studies, Ewha Woman’s University; Prof. Baik Youngseo and Choe Keysook of the Institute of Korean Studies, and Prof. Michael Kim of Underwood International College at Yonsei University; Dr. Peng Hsiaoyen and Chen Hsiangyin of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica; Prof. Wu Peichen, Choi Malsoon, and Chi Tawei of The Graduate Institute of Taiwanese v Literature, National Chengchi University. Advice and support given by these scholars has been a great help in advancing my research. This research project would not have been done without the support of several grants and fellowships. Department of Asian Studies, East Asia Program, Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and Graduate School at Cornell provided me generous fellowships and grants for fulfilling course works and conducting research in East Asia. Being awarded with the Fellowships for Doctoral Candidates in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Academia Sinica, and the Dissertation Fellowships from Chiang Ching- kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange allows me to concentrate solely on my research and writing during the final stages of my doctoral studies. I am also grateful for the invitation and travel support from the Program in Transnational Korean Studies, University of California-San Diego, and The Center for Taiwan Studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara, which allows me to have the opportunity to meet other Asian Studies scholars across different disciplines and regions and to enhance my research project. I wish to acknowledge the help provided by Kim Scott and Erin Kotmel of Department of Asian Studies, for their kind assistance with the administrative works during my studies. I would like to thank Joshua Young and Doreen Silva of East Asia Program, for their guidance and support for the GSSC events, from which I learn a lot and expanded my community at Cornell and East Asian Studies. My special thanks are extended to Chuang Tienming and Julia, for helping me to settle in and keeping me company from the first day I arrived at Ithaca. vi My research project has gained considerable precision and insight from conversations with fellow colleagues at Cornell, especially Song Misun, Lim Wahguan, Wang Chunyen, Huang Junliang, Mina Ann, Walter Hsu, Yi Wejung, Cai Yiwen, Annetta Fotopoulos, Jennifer Goodman, Eileen Vo, Tyran Grillo, Dexter Thomas, Zhang Ning, Clarence Lee, Chen Xiangjing, Lee Sujin, Jack Chia, Chen Shiauyun, and Park Jahyon; and with numerous close friends in Taiwan and South Korea, especially Wu Pinhsien, Liu Yafang, Lin Chien- ting, y, Tsai Yuchen, Ken, Midori, Rachel, Kim Joohee, Chang Suji, Kim Jeongmin, Ki Suyoung, Hong Ham, and Gabriel Sylvian. Lastly, I extend the deepest gratitude to my mother Liu Suyue, for her unconditional love and faith in me. Thanks to my father, coolest brothers, my best grandparents-in-law, and Amber, who lovingly support me to finish the journey. This dissertation is dedicated to them. vii NOTE ON ROMANIZATION AND TRANSLATION Korean words in the text are rendered using the McCune-Reischauer romanization system; Chinese words are rendered using the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system, Japanese words are rendered using the Revised Hepburn system of romanization, with the exception of proper names for which alternative spellings are well established. For western words, the original spelling was used. Korean, Chinese, and Japanese names follow the standard order—family name first, followed first name—unless a particular name is traditionally rendered in Western order—given name first. All translations from Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese sources in this dissertation are done by me, other than those listed in the notes and works cited. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 0-1 Modernity and Translation as Bordering Systems 2 0-2 The Unimagined Communities: Inter-referencing Taiwan and Korea 10 0-3 Language and Sexuality in the Lure of the Modern 16 CHAPTER 1 MODERNIZATION OF LANGUAGE, AND ITS OTHERS 22 1-1 Rethinking Language Reforms in Colonial Taiwan and Korea 23 1-2 Constructing the “Newness” in Language 33 1-3 Gendering Language: Women in language and the New Novel 46 1-4 Borders and Bordering: Language and Its Others 61 CHAPTER 2 THE UNTRANSLATABILITY OF COLONIAL LITERATURE 69 2-1 Theorizing Untranslatability: Colonial Ambivalence in Languages 70 2-2 Dislocation of the Colonized: The Temporalities in Colonial Modernity 78 2-3 The Untranslatability of Colonial Literature (1): The Untranslatable 87 2-4 The Untranslatability of Colonial Literature (2): The Unhomed 95 CHAPTER 3 SEXUAL MODERNITY AND THE COLONIZATION OF SEX 107 3-1 Love and Its Discontent: The Institutionalization of Modern Love 109 3-2 Governmentality of Sex: The Emergence of Modern Sexual Subjects 122 3-3 Gendering Nation: Translating Female Third-person Pronoun 129 3-4 Representations of Sexuality in 1920-30s Literature 138 CHAPTER 4 CRITICAL LOVE FOR THE NATION 145 4-1 The Fetishization of Love: Love in the Early Capitalist Era 146 4-2 Unreachable Intimacies: Love of Exhaustion in Colonial Everydayness 159 4-3 Critical Love for the Nation (1): Double Suicide 173 4-4 Critical Love for the Nation (2): Same-Sex Love 185 CONCLUSION 203 5-1 Return to the Colonial Present 203 5-2 Unpacking the Complicity of Colonialism, Nationalism, Capitalism and Sexism 208 5-3 Re-imagining Postcolonial Communities and the Politics of “Trans-” 213 BIBLIOGRAPHY 216 INTRODUCTION This dissertation project seeks to rethink colonial modernity in a transnational and translational revision, in the accounts of translingual language movements and transcultural practices of modern sexuality in early twentieth-century Taiwan and Korea. This project is initiated by the critical insight of postcolonial theory.