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© Copyright 2016 Cindi Textor Radical Language, Radical Identity: Korean Writers in Japanese Spaces and the Burden to “Represent” Cindi Textor A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2016 Reading Committee: Davinder Bhowmik, Chair Edward Mack, Chair Heekyoung Cho Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Asian Languages and Literature University of Washington Abstract Radical Language, Radical Identity: Korean Writers in Japanese Spaces and the Burden to “Represent” Cindi Textor Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: Davinder Bhowmik, Associate Professor Asian Languages and Literature Edward Mack, Associate Professor Asian Languages and Literature This dissertation examines literary texts by colonial Korean writers in the Japanese empire and the post-war “Zainichi” Korean minority in Japan. Whereas colonial Korean literature and Zainichi literature have typically been considered separately, I analyze them as part of a single trajectory, noting continuities in how Korean writers on both sides of the 1945 collapse of the empire struggle to avoid the dual traps of essentialism and assimilation. That is, in the face of pressures to assimilate into (post)imperial Japan, these writers grapple with the question of how to assert Korean particularity without reproducing stereotyped notions of Korean difference which were generated by the same imperial hierarchies. This overdetermined position—arising from the dual impulse to deconstruct essentialist difference and to avoid collapsing productive difference into a hegemonic mainstream—may be called the double bind of identity. The central focus of this project, then, is whether and how marginalized writers are able to overcome particular versions of this critical double bind through the medium of literary text. It further attempts to rethink the frameworks applied to these authors and texts, including modern Korean literature, modern Japanese literature, and even groupings like Zainichi literature that attempt to resist strictly national models, by shedding light on their participation in such overdeterminations. Looking closely at how writers work within and around the various constraints imposed on their writing, I argue that the hybrid language of these texts, located in the interstices and imbrications of Korean and Japanese spaces, is a potential site for radical representations of a particular “Korean” identity. The space of literary text offers a medium for representing identities less prone to falling into essentialist traps precisely because it is imaginary and undecidable. This radical language makes possible an escape from the double bind of identity faced by these writers: to simultaneously “represent” and transcend Korea. In this way, reading Korean writers in Japanese spaces not only offers a basis for critiquing ethno-national literary frameworks, but also has the potential to open up new possibilities for coping with difference, contributing to broader debates on intersectionality and identity politics. To that end, this dissertation takes up the particular intersectional circumstances of four Korean writers and their negotiations in hybrid literary texts: the queer language and subjectivities of Yi Kwangsu's Mujŏng, Ch'ae Mansik's ambiguously satirical repent for pro-Japanese collaboration, Kim Sŏkpŏm's invention of an imaginary Korea within the space of the Japanese language, and Kin Kakuei's attempt to “speak” through a narrator who stutters. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1. Introduction.................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2. Queer(ing) Language in Yi Kwangsu's Mujŏng: Sexuality, Nation, and Colonial Modernity.......................................................................................................................................25 2.1 Overdetermined Norms and Queer Resistance....................................................................30 2.2 Code-Switching as Cross-Dressing..................................................................................... 46 2.3 Queer Time and Space in the Train......................................................................................60 Chapter 3. The Problem of Minjok: Ch'ae Mansik Before and After Liberation..........................68 3.1 Reading Ch'ae Mansik......................................................................................................... 71 3.2 Anti-Colonial versus Anti-Japanese: Ch'ae Mansik's Colonial Fiction...............................82 3.3 The “Liberation” of Korea: Continuity Across Rupture......................................................92 3.4 The Irony of “Minjok ŭi choein”....................................................................................... 102 3.5 The Problem of the “Minjok” and its “Choein”.................................................................113 Chapter 4. Representing Radical Difference: Kim Sŏkpŏm's Korea(n) in Japan(ese)................116 4.1 National Allegory and the Politics of Reading Difference................................................119 4.2 Zainichi Particularity: From Exile to Ethnicity................................................................. 126 4.3 Being as Resistance: Korea(n) in the Space of Japan(ese)................................................ 143 Chapter 5. Disability, Ethnicity, and the Intersectional Politics of Speaking: Kin Kakuei's Kogoeru kuchi..............................................................................................................................158 5.1 The Immaterial Body......................................................................................................... 161 i 5.2 Confession as Identification...............................................................................................174 5.3 Aural-Visual Doppelgängers and the Medium of Text...................................................... 182 Works Cited................................................................................................................................. 192 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Over the course of this project, I have been continually humbled by the generosity of my friends, teachers, and mentors. To those who have invested in this project, or in me, I am grateful and honored. Thank you to the best committee I could ask for. Davinder Bhowmik was always ready to suggest new texts to explore, new connections to be made. Edward Mack was a meticulous reader, often spotting the important ideas in my writing before I did, and showing me the way to take them further. Heekyoung Cho never pulled punches, constantly pushing me to raise the stakes of the project. Together they offered a wealth of advice, support, and inspiration. Thank you to Ko Youngran, whose name is not on the cover page, but who engaged with and guided this work as much as anyone. Every hour spent with her was invaluable to the project and to my own intellectual growth. Thank you to Robert Tierney and Atsuko Ueda, who worked with me on the seeds that would become this dissertation and spurred me toward the next stage. Thank you to Andrea Arai and Clark Sorensen, for including me in their conversations on Japanese and Korean “spaces of possibility,” a tremendous source of stimulation and feedback. Thank you to Paul Atkins, Elizabeth Oyler, Hwasook Nam, and Young-Jun Lee, who each played a crucial role in my training. iii Thank you to my language teachers. Akizawa Tomotarō, Heekyoung Cho (again), Kawano Takako, Sun-Mi Kim, Seiichi Makino, Ōtake Hiroko, Yukari Tokumasu, and Yang Hyejin enabled this project at the most fundamental level. Thank you to the tireless scholars I’ve worked with in Korea and Japan. Hatano Setsuko, Hwang Hoduk, Kim Jaeyong, Kim Kyŏngch’e, Kim Moran, Kim Ŭn-ae, Kōno Kensuke, Kwak Hyoungduck, Kwŏn Myŏng-a, Junghee Lee, Makise Akiko, Nam Bujin, O Sejong, Pak Kwanghyŏn, Ryu Chunghee, Ryu Jinhee, Shin Jiyoung, Takahashi Azusa, Watanabe Naoki, and many others offered a supportive and stimulating academic community. They read what I wrote, let me read what they wrote, shared their knowledge, shared their resources, and bought me more than a few drinks. They made me feel welcome and included at every turn. Thank you to Nathaniel Heneghan for reading Zainichi lit with me. Thank you to Aimee Kwon and Christina Yi for a great panel. Thank you to Junghee Lee for helping me speak Korean. Thank you Jyana Browne, Andrew Campana, Chris Lowy, Bonnie McClure, Kimberlee Sanders, Sachi Schmidt-Hori, Justine Wiesinger, and Kai Xie for talking grad school and for talking not grad school. Thank you MSR, RDP, EVM, and parents. Thank you to Fulbright IIE and the Chester Fritz Endowment for funding this research, and to the Blakemore Foundation for funding language training. Thank you to Richard Okada, the first to make me believe I could do this kind of work. Thank you to David Goodman, the first to show me how to do it. This dissertation is dedicated to their memory. iv 1 Chapter 1. Introduction This dissertation starts from a critical impasse in the study of underrepresented literatures. 1 This impasse, which I will refer to as the double bind of identity politics, arises from the dual impulse to break down the essentialist difference assigned to an underrepresented collectivity and its literature and to avoid collapsing or assimilating that difference into the hegemonic mainstream, maintaining a productive particularity in the