Korean Studies Internet Discussion List KOREAN STUDIES REVIEW
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.)
reviewed by Seungsook Moon
Vassar CollegeThis 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.
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 chuch'e 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.
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.
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 Nationalism and Feminism in the Third World (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.
Overall, this book skillfully illuminates the cultural politics of nationalist narratives, but raises deeper questions about the exclusive focus on discourse in social analysis.
Citation:
Moon, Seungsook 2004
Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism, by Sheila Miyoshi Jager, (2003)
Korean Studies Review 2004, no. 17
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr04-17.htm