[KS] Re: Facing/Avoidng One's Own Heritage

michael robinson mrobinso at indiana.edu
Fri Feb 5 17:31:35 EST 1999


Dear Eugene: 

You are correct, the realities of race discourse (and ethnic, national,
gender and sexual preference, and on and on are rather serious.  This is
especially the case of people in public teaching jobs.  Ours is a serious
business made even more serious (at times absurdly so) by racial and
identity representation politics.  To say people who came of age in the
sixties might share and experience or certain political/cultural
orientation is just about as meaningless as reifying Koreans.  Thus the
trap of identity politics leading to new and more meaningless
representations of other reifications.  The only difference is the
politics and direction of the Othering I suppose.  The great contribution
of post-structuralist writing has been, I suppose, to question the
position of the scholar
within his work.  Anyone breathing and still doing research today
understands this.  Even if they don't use the langauge of "position" they
have a position and any well-trained historian is aware that he carries to
the table a set of opinions and biases whether or not he believes in a
definition of "historical truth".  There are no historical truths other
than those that survive endless and sustained criticism.  Too bad things
can't be more lighthearted, but we are often writing and thinking about
stuff that is pretty damn serious.  

Mike Robinson,(Anglo Midwestern Urban middle class Male American Area
Studies Professor Father Son Brother and Coffee addict)

On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Eugene Y. Park wrote:

> Dear Prof. Robinson and List Members:
> 
> I hope I didn't offend anyone with my stock portryal of a white (or
> "Caucasian" if your prefer) American Koreanist.  Coming from an unusually
> diverse circle of friends most of whom have opted for an interracial
> marrage and used racial generalizations light-heartedly (Irish are this,
> Koreans are that, etc.), sometimes I forget the reality of race discourse
> in America.
> 
> My comment wasn't so much a criticism against white American Koreanists as
> perhaps too obvious a suggestion that all scholars studying a culture
> should be more honest about acknowledging how their unique personal
> experience might shape their interpretations.  Unfortunately, I see some
> Koreanits who pretend that their scholarship is based on pure obejectivity,
> without a grain of subjectivity.  As long as one can avoid this pitfall,
> then I don't see why one should not incorporate his/her own heritage in a
> comparative discussion of Korea.  That was my main point in response to Mr.
> Hoare's original comments.
> 
> Yours,
> Gene Park
> 
> >
> >Re: your generalization about "white" scholars studying Korea or any other
> >non-Western society as carrying an "incompleted" mission from the sixties
> >or of being somehow "representative" of the sixties.  You're right it is a
> >sweeping generalization.
> >
> >Mike Robinson
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------
> 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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