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--></style><title>[KS] KSR 2004-17: _Narratives of Nation Building in
Ko</title></head><body>
<div><font color="#000000"><i>_</i>Narratives of Nation Building in
Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism_, by Sheila Miyoshi Jager, 2003.
Armonk, New York and London: M.E. Sharpe. 185 pages. ISBN
0-7656-1068-X.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
reviewed by Seungsook Moon<br>
Vassar College<br>
semoon@vassar.edu<br>
<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab></font></div>
<div><font
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab>This book, composed of new and formerly published chapters,
examines how narratives of nation building in early twentieth century
Korea produced new forms of masculinity and femininity and how new and
old gender systems have equally informed nationalist narratives
throughout the twentieth century. In Part One Jager identifies
formative nationalist narratives in the writings of Sin Ch'ae-ho
(1880-1936) and Yi Kwang-su (1892-1950) that constructed,
respectively, the warrior-hero as the protagonist of the nation, and
the loyal/enlightened woman as a political sign symbolizing the
nation's core values and authenticity. The militarized masculinity of
the warrior-hero is a novel development in juxtaposition with the
masculinity of the Confucian scholar, and loyal/enlightened femininity
is new in its conception of woman as an ontological category rather
than one defined by roles tied to specific activities and work
embedded in patriarchal kinship. In Parts Two and Three Jager
discusses significant moments of nationalist discourse produced during
the colonial period, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s that reveal
the recurring tropes of militarized masculinity, loyal/enlightened
femininity, and responses to the new conception of
masculinity.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>What is
noteworthy in this nationalist construction of new gendered
identities, Jager persuasively argues, is the selective appropriation
of old and new systems of gender that underlie the new tales of
national suffering, struggle, redemption and triumph narrated in the
naturalized language of family and kinship. "The political
unconscious" (in Frederic Jameson's terms) that makes nationalism
appealing, Jager contends, stems from classic Confucian narrative
configurations about women, gender, and kinship, particularly as seen
in such canonical romances as the tale of Ch'unhyang and the values of
filial piety and fatherly benevolence. For example, the discourse
of<i> chuch'e</i> itself, by metonymically linking romance to
patriotism, employs romance tropes to discuss national reunification.
Dissident student activists of the 1980s depicted national unification
as the reunion of a separated couple, and viewed Korean history in
terms of the genealogy of trans-generational patriotism and the
redemption of manhood. According to Jager, the redemption of manhood
took an interesting turn in the discourse of nation-building
articulated by President Kim Dae Jung (1998-2002), once a leading
dissident persecuted by military regimes. Adopting the Christian
notion of forgiveness, Kim constructs masculinity/nationhood in sharp
opposition to the ideal of militarized masculinity celebrated during
Park Chung Hee's rule and even Kim Young Sam's civilian
administration.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Reflecting
the "linguistic turn" in social sciences under the influence
of postmodernism and poststructuralism, this book focuses almost
exclusively on the recurring motifs underlying patriotic narratives
that construct the seamless historical continuity of Korean nation.
While this discursive approach to patriotism allows for rich and
insightful readings of various moments of nationalist discourse, this
book's primary focus on texts raises questions about the overall
significance of its gender analysis. Treating gender exclusively as a
symbolic order that structures the public imaginary (or the political
unconscious), this study does not link its textual analysis to the
changing social relations of gender in Korean society. While such a
linkage lies outside Jager's primary aims to offer "a kind of
literary 'montage' that attempts to decode the narrative platforms of
Korean nationalism while staying clear of their progressive claims"
(xi), the author's concern with just such progressive claims and
allusions to alternative ways to think about historical categories
like gender and nation begs an important question. A critical move
away from a teleological approach to history does not have to mean the
reduction of social reality to discourse.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>What is
curiously missing in this otherwise valuable study is references to
the literature on gender and nationalism in Korea and other social
contexts, which would strengthen its objective of deconstructing
"the universal myth of national liberation" (p. 56). For
instance, as Kumari Jayawardena documented in<i> Nationalism and
Feminism in the Third World</i> (1989), the "Woman's Question"
was a strategic theme shared by nationalist discourses and movements
in many colonized and semi-colonized countries. As postcolonial
and/or feminist scholars such as Lata Mani, Tani Barlow, Partha
Chatterjee, and Anne McClintock have argued, the masculinist politics
of nationalism in these Third World countries has tended to reduce
Woman to an abstract political sign symbolizing a nation's
spirituality and authenticity but devoid of social relations of
power. The fusion of "the private" and "the
public" in nationalist narratives, which makes nationalism
persuasive, according to Jager, is also a common narrative strategy of
nationalisms elsewhere.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"> </font></div>
<div><font
color="#000000"><x-tab>
</x-tab>Overall, this book skillfully illuminates the cultural
politics of nationalist narratives, but raises deeper questions about
the exclusive focus on discourse in social analysis.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font
color="#000000"> <x-tab>
</x-tab> </font
></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Citation:</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Moon, Seungsook 2004</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><i>_</i>Narratives of Nation Building in
Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism_, by Sheila Miyoshi Jager,
(2003)</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">_Korean Studies Review_ 2004, no.
17</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Electronic file:
http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr04-17.htm</font></div>
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