[KS] Facing/Avoiding One's Heritage

Eugene Y. Park eypark at fas.harvard.edu
Fri Feb 5 22:16:28 EST 1999


Dear Mike:

The following paragraph was accidentally left out from my previous comments
to your reaction.  Here it is.

Gene Park

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Given that we should all try to be aware of our own set of biases steming
from our unique backgrounds, I see a curious pattern here on the listserve:
be it in connection with the collaboration, the Han, or whatever, the list
members seem comfortable using categories such as Korean, Polish, Danish,
Indian, etc.  Everyone so far seems to agree that a comparative perspective
could be useful, since we are not always the most objective judges of our
own national or ethnic experiences.  In the similiar vein, why is it
dangerous or inappropriate to use the category, "white American," when it
is part of daily American reality?  If one could speak of an entire
generation called Koreans with colonial experience, for example, and their
varying responses, then why is it less worthy intellectual an endeavor to
consider, say, SOME white American Koreanists coming to adulthood in the
sixties?  Is this group exempt from a scrutiny for bias when we strive to
be on the look out for interal biases in our scholarship, as called for by
poststructuralists (among many others)?
Teaching Korean studies courses to Canadian undergraduates here at McGill,
I'm struggling to answer these questions raised by the students, perhaps
raised with some ease since I'm NOT a white American academic (like the
majority among the Koreanists in the West) and since I'm not much older
than most undergraduates.

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Eugene Y. Park
Assistant Professor
Department of East Asian Studies
McGill University
3434 McTavish Street
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 1X9

Phone:	(514) 398-6742, ext. 0209; (514) 281-9764
Fax:	(514) 398-1882
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