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on their behalf, or written about them. practice. The women of these works are This writing of course has ’s good North Korean women as Rewriting revolution politics, and its social, cultural, and historical would understand what that means. messaging writ loudly and boldly through it. Rewriting Revolution thus encounters North Korea’s politics, its charismatic politics female partners living and struggling under Robert Winstanley-Chesters as Heonik Kwon and Byung-ho Chung have the political and cultural weight of North termed it, is inescapable within the country Korean expectation. Frustrated at their and is certainly seemingly omnipresent husbands’ dreams of research success and Immanuel Kim’s Rewriting in its cultural production. This has led to a other futures, yet constrained in potential Revolution: Women, Sexuality widely held opinion within academia that critiques by both their social role and the Reviewed title and Memory in North Korean this is so much the case that in fact there is political demands upon individuals to Rewriting Revolution: Fiction is nothing therefore no cultural production in North Korea, it is contribute to the greater socialist good. Like if not ambitious in its aims to only political production by other means. all regular North Korean’s they are expected Women, Sexuality offer something new on North Essentially there is no art or culture in North to give up things, to subjugate desires for the and Memory in North Korea, and specifically on the Korea, only politics. Scholarly work that has collective and for the wider success of the place of women in that nation’s focused on North such as nation, yet Kim’s analysis of their narratives, Korean Fiction revolution. Of course just as the feisty B. R. Myers’s writing on Han Sorya demonstrates the cognitive dissonance, North Koreans in North Korea, suggests that unlike other dictatorships psychological dislocations, and emotional Immanuel Kim. 2018. even at the historical moment of and autarkies like the Soviet Union under trouble experienced by the nation’s women. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press 2018, are difficult to access, so Stalin, North Korea has not even been able It is not easy being a woman of North Korean ISBN 9780824872632 Rewriting Revolution encounters to produce a recognisable or authentic literature, and it is acceptable to Pyongyang’s the nation’s women in a context socialist or autocratic realism in its cultural authorities and the wider framework of the in which they have become easier products. In a nation where the only reality is nation’s politics, that that dis-ease is at least to connect to and encounter, politics, how can there even be the reflection visible or knowable to the careful reader. 018 saw the world turn what appeared its literary products. Kim’s work essentially necessary to create a cultural product, A careful reader of Rewriting Revolution to be a new page on interactions and explores the place of women in North Korean at least for one that is removed from that might also note the unease within the book 2relations with North Korea. There were revolutionary society and politics through political reality. itself, perhaps the unease of the author. moments of inter-Korean interaction that elements of the nation’s cultural production. In Rewriting Revolution, Immanuel Kim Given its well organised and well edited might never have been imagined. Rituals It must be said at the outset that the book suggests that not only are authentic cultural structure and form, Kim’s work on occasion, and practices of friendship, connection primarily does so through literature produced products possible in North Korea, but in its seems to encounter its own struggle with and relationship grown through centuries in North Korea during the 1980s, though it literature, what externally we term ‘subaltern’ politics, strain to break its own tight reins. of shared cultural development and growth. does look backwards to work from earlier experiences, opinions and possibilities can In particular Chapter Five of Rewriting Some exchanges seemed almost parodically decades. So readers looking for a particularly be found. These experiences and possibilities Revolution includes some of the most erudite Korean, tangibly of the peninsula in a way current review of North Korean literature which can even run counter or be disruptive to the and considered writing on the industries which was difficult to quite fathom. At the reflects or mirrors the era of the post-Arduous needs, ambitions and directions of North of North Korean defector narratives and Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, North Korea’s March, byungjin (‘parallel development’), Korea’s politics. A very careful parsing of publishing, this reviewer has yet read, and extraordinary cultural gift of 250 colourful donju (‘masters of money’), and Kim Jong Un works such as Paek Nam-nyong’s Friend, which emerges in the middle of a chapter cheerleaders confounded the world’s media might be disappointed. Aside from the recent Kim Kyo-sŏp’s Heights of Life, Ch’oe focused on redefinitions of motherhood and attention. 250 energetic, brightly publication of Immanuel Kim’s own translation Sang-sun’s Morning Star and Ri Hui-nam’s in the North Korean context. There is a work, coloured, snappily dressed North Korean of Friend, a novel by the North Korean author Eight Hours, Rewriting Revolution, is replete influenced by the great Norman Finkelstein females moving with a synchronicity that Paek Nam-nyong, and the academic work of with gaps, fissures, and potential ‘lines of in these ideas, but perhaps just as the seemed both impressive and anachronistically Sonja Ryang, Suzy Kim, Ruth Barraclough, flight’ (as Deleuze would understand them) North Korean women of the literature Kim is confusing at the same time. Surely the only Hyaeweol Choi, and Sandra Fahy, few authors for women and female experience in North primarily tasked to write about, the politics 250 North Korean women together in one have really sought to unpick or uncover the Korea. The reader must bear in mind that and cultural expectations of audience, place that many people watching would lives and experiences of women in North Korea since this is North Korean literature we are commissioner, and other authorities demand have ever seen, they were both present and and the activist and paramilitary communities talking about, passed by its authorities that it is restricted and difficult to write unreachable at the same time. This is of before it, which are claimed to have birthed its and institutions of control and censorship about. These strains are held in common course one of the truisms of any moment politics. Kim’s Rewriting Revolution therefore generally these experiences cannot be as with the characters and stories Kim uncovers about North Korea, just as it might seem to is surely one of the first works which seeks explicit as South Korean writing such as in Rewriting Revolution, a careful work of become accessible and knowable, its people to consider, at least even in passing, female Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. If the reader uncovering and encountering in North Korean and politics confound the outside world. sexuality, women’s role in marriage and family is looking for an exploration of the outer cultural production, a welcome contribution Writing on North Korea is much the same, and divorce in North Korea. reaches of female sexuality in North Korea, to a growing body of writing which really so much at the present that is of the past, so For most readers North Korean writing and or earthy experiences of female donju, they seeks to know the nation, and not just by much grasping at straws, even with the great literature is primarily the work of Kim Il Sung, will be disappointed. It is worth saying that its fissures, ruptures, and collapses. opportunity available, so little creativity. How Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un, or is about them. for the most part Kim’s focus is on female roles much readers and thinkers would welcome its There is a voluminous body of material claiming which are deeply embedded in conventional Robert Winstanley-Chesters, rewriting anew for any changing situation. to be written by North Korea’s leaders, written North Korean political, social, and cultural University of Leeds, United Kingdom

The book puts forth three factors in explaining why the official ulama in Malaysia Capture or co-optation? have been more successful in capturing the state than their counterparts in Indonesia: Making sense of official ulama’s authority a clear institutional role, coherent ideology, and organizational unity (p. 41). Firstly, the in Malaysia and Indonesia official ulama in Malaysia have been deployed by the state as agents of Islamization since Reviewed title the onset of the Islamic resurgence in the late Azmil Tayeb The State, Ulama and Islam 1970s, which gives them a clear institutional role, namely to defuse the political threat in Malaysia and Indonesia posed by the Islamic opposition such as the hroughout the Islamic history, ummah Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party (Parti Islam Se- (the Muslim community) in general Norshahril Saat. 2018. Malaysia). The Ulama Council of Indonesia does Tperceives the authority of ulama Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press not enjoy similar core clarity in institutional (religious scholars) in the context of the ISBN 9789462982932 role since the threat of political Islam to the ulama’s distance from the seat of power. In state legitimacy in Indonesia is not as dire as other words, an ulama’s authority is highly it is in Malaysia. Secondly, official ulama in regarded if the ummah deems him capable Malaysia are institutionally stronger due to of exercising independent judgment free that the power relations between official ulama In this book, official ulama in Malaysia their ability to rally around a coherent ideology from the self-serving sway of the rulers. and their state patrons is not as clear-cut and are represented by the National Fatwa that propagates the interests of the regime Nevertheless, starting in the late-1800s, the lopsided as it is conventionally believed. The Committee [of the National Council for Islamic and the sultanates, particularly the five tenets expansion of modern bureaucracy provided book argues through the theoretical lens of Joel Religious Affairs Malaysia] (Jawatankuasa of the state philosophy Rukunegara and the the ulama with a new coercive and deep- Migdal’s ‘state-in-society’ that official ulama in Fatwa Majlis Kebangsaan Bagi Hal Ugama belief in Ketuanan Melayu (literally Malay reaching tool to exert their authority over Malaysia, despite the initial co-optation, have Islam Malaysia), the Department of Islamic supremacy). In comparison, the religiously the ummah, in return for bestowing religious managed to assert their independence and Development Malaysia (Jabatan Kemajuan neutral Indonesian state philosophy Pancasila imprimatur on the policies of the ruling agency, to an extent that they have successfully Islam Malaysia), and the Malaysian Institute severely circumscribes the ability of official regime. Official ulama, as these religious captured some parts of the state. This stands in for Islamic Understanding (Institut Kefahaman ulama in Indonesia to advance their religious functionaries are known as, are conventionally contrast to the official ulama in Indonesia, who Islam Malaysia). Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the agenda, and thus depriving them of a powerful seen as ‘rubber stamps’ and ‘lackeys’ of the have been less successful than their Malaysian Ulama Council of Indonesia (Majelis Ulama ideology with which they can instrumentalize. ruling elites, who surrender their theological counterparts in doing so. Simply put, official Indonesia) forms the collective authority of Finally, by being organizationally cohesive the independent judgment in exchange for ulama are not as toothless and less influential official ulama in the country. Even though the official ulama in Malaysia are able to confront material rewards and status (p. 24). as they are made out to be since they are able aforementioned institutions can be considered threats to its interests and authority in a more to employ the legitimized powers of the state as official ulama in their respective countries, effective and forceful manner, in comparison to However, Norshahril Saat’s empirically rich to extract compliance and respect for their their official roles and status vary, which the Ulama Council of Indonesia, which is riven and theoretically informed study of official authority from the Muslim populace, albeit to explain the differences in their capacities to with ideological divisions and internal rivalries ulama in Malaysia and Indonesia illustrates varying degrees of success. capture the state. that, in turn, weaken its authority.