A Critical Journey from American Romanticism to Postmodernism: Mat Johnson’s Pym as a Metafictional Parody

Kang Meeyoung 대한영어영문학회 2020 영어영문학연구 Vol.46 No.4

Kang, Meeyoung. “A Critical Journey from American Romanticism to Postmodernism: Mat Johnson’s Pym as a Metafictional Parody.” Studies in English Language & Literature 46.4 (2020): 1-16. Mat Johnson’s Pym (2011) is a satirical parody in which he anatomizes Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket for the purpose of lampooning American colonial and racist subconsciousness. Pym repeats The Narrative with a similar plot and characterization, but creates a chasm in which its reader can see the contradiction of white ideology including white supremacy and imperialism inherent in The Narrative. Moreover, analysis of generic ideology as it relates the Romance novel and American Romanticism enables us to stand against lingering racist discourse in American culture. In so doing, Johnson employs a technique of metafictional parody as a counterpart to the American romance novel, which has long been considered a representative American literary genre. Johnson associates American Romanticism with historical and political dimensions at the time of rising nationalism and racism, using postmodern strategies, including intertexuality, parody, and self-reflexivity. In this way, Pym becomes a place where the journey from American romanticism to postmodernism takes place.

The Political Implications of the Epistemological and Ontological Quandaries in Ted Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”

Kang, Meeyoung 신영어영문학회 2021 신영어영문학 Vol.78 No.-

This essay illuminates the political implications of the epistemological and ontological quandaries in Ted Chiang’s “The Lifecycle of Software Objects.” Although this novella ostensibly deals mainly with the lives of techno-humans called digients, it ultimately serves as a vehicle to precipitate reconsideration of traditional perspectives on human existence in terms of ethical dilemma and existential ambiguity. At the intersection of the paradoxial moments, humans are dependent on digients for their epistemological and ontological change. In this context, I explore the way that this novella enacts the political aesthetics, eliciting readers’ participation and making alternative perspectives to traditional assumptions of what it means to be human.

전염병 서사에서 나타나는 혐오의 변증법: 그레그 베어(Greg Bear)의 다윈 시리즈(Darwin Series)를 중심으로

Kang Meeyoung 신영어영문학회 2022 신영어영문학 Vol.83 No.-

Greg Bear’s Darwin series consisting of Darwin’s Radio (1999) and its sequel Darwin’s Children (2003) portrays the eschatological crisis caused by an endogenous retrovirus named SHEVA which causes a great pandemonium and disgust among people. This retrovirus triggers speciation by rapidly evolving the next generation in utero but does so in a way that plunges the world into chaos. The rapid outbreak and activation of SHEVA triggers widespread panic and social turmoil, which in turn lead to large-scale acts of violence against the infected. The chaos and resultant cruelty shown in both narratives arouse questions as to the paradoxical principles of disgust. On the surface level, Darwin series depicts how social conflicts derive from disgust among people who project their fear and horror onto the minorities while it also grapples with disgust on an evolutionary dimension. Evoking the possibility of redemption of the human world, creating a counter-discourse to human conflict and disgust. The posthuman existence of Shevites, a new species of humanity, represents the blurred distinction between nature and culture, not to speak of that of human and nonhuman; this post-humanity breaks with Cartesian dualism and thereby demands a new epistemology which presupposes network of human and nonhuman and their interrelatedness, negating anthropocentrism.

장애혐오와 미디어 : 코로나19 발생초기 장애 관련 뉴스 빅데이터를 중심으로

Kang Meeyoung 한국인문사회과학회 2022 현상과 인식 Vol.46 No.4

본 연구는 장애혐오의 문제를 심리적, 사회적 관점에서 접근하고, 그 원인과 대안을 비판적으로 논의하기 위해, 뉴스미디어가 장애혐오를 조장하는 방식에 주목한다. 코로나시대의 한국 뉴스 미디어의 장애인에 관한 뉴스보도 양태를 빅데이터를 통해 분석함으로써, 장애인과 관련한 뉴스미디어의 프레임을 분석하고, 그러한 프레임이 대중적 담론을 형성하는 과정, 나아가 그 담론이 장애혐오를 형성하는 과정을 연구하였다. 본 연구의 이론적 배경은 기본적으로 객관적이고 중립적인 뉴스보도를 추구하는 미디어의 이면에 내재하는 서로 다른 정치적 경제적 입장차이가 소수 약자에 대한 상이한 시각 차이로 이어지고 여론을 조장할 수 있으며, 그러한 미디어에 의해 장애를 향한 부정적인 인식이 조장되거나 강화될 수 있음을 전제로 한다. 이를 규명하기 위해, 코로나시기 뉴스 빅데이터를 수집하고, 각 미디어들의 장애인에 대한 중심 시각을 도출해 낸다. 그 결과, 관련 이슈를 다루는 데 있어, 장애인에 대한 언급이나 고려없이 그저 불안과 공포를 조성하거나 장애인에 대한 부정적 인식과 편견을 고착화시키는 프레임을 통해 뉴스미디어가 장애혐오를 유발하는 방식을 조명한다. 나아가 이러한 보도양태 이면에는 비장애인 중심성과 중앙집권적 시각 등이 자리하고 있음을 밝히고, 이에 대한 대안으로, 장애인과 같은 사회적 약자를 배려하는 미디어의 보도윤리와 역할에 대해 논의한다.

Epistemological Expansion through Christian Allegory in Apocalyptic Science Fiction: Greg Bear’s Darwin’s Radio and Darwin’s Children

Kang Meeyoung 한국영어영문학회 2022 영어 영문학 Vol.68 No.4

In Greg Bear’s Darwin series, which portrays the eschatological crisis caused by a virus named SHEVA, Christian allegory works as a mythical source that provides natural thematic coherence on one side and as a counter-narrative against which a new worldview makes sense on the other. Using the fragmentariness and incoherency of allegory, Bear juxtaposes dialectical images of the divine/the secular, the human/the non-human, and good/evil, thus blurring essentialist conceptions and promoting readers’ epistemological transformation. Appropriating the framework of Christian apocalypticism, wherein salvation and eschatology are embodied and vision and reality intermingle, conflicts become synthesized in terms of the interaction of Shevites and humans. Evoking the possibility of the redemption of the human world, creating a counter-discourse to human conflict and disgust, the posthuman existence of Shevites, a new species of humanity, represents the blurred distinction between nature and culture in addition to that of human and nonhuman; this post-humanity breaks with Cartesian dualism and thereby demands a new epistemology which presupposes a network of human and nonhuman and their interrelatedness, negating anthropocentrism. At the ambivalent intersection, the Christian allegory in the Darwin series does not work to convey Christian messages as a Grand Narrative but instead serves as an axis with which to produce an anti-discourse and ultimately to go beyond binarism and essentialism, inviting readers to a new skepticism regarding the conventions they have held. In this way, the pandemic crisis leads to the emergence of new myths supplanting biblical ideologies as well as anthropocentrism and supporting interconnectedness of everything.

Comparative Long-term Outcomes of Laparoscopic Left Lateral Sectionectomy and Radiofrequency Ablation for Single Small Hepatocellular Carcinoma Located in Left Lateral Segments of the Liver

MeeYoung Kang,Jai Young Cho 대한외과학회 2022 대한외과학회 학술대회 초록집 Vol.2022 No.11

Aesthetic Distraction in Gertrude Stein’s “Melanctha”

( Meeyoung Kang ) 한국영어영문학회 2019 영어 영문학 Vol.65 No.3

Beyond the antithetical distinction between modernist and realist approaches on Gertrude Stein’s “Melanctha,” I elucidate how the two seemingly incompatible perspectives interrelate, enacting the aesthetic of distraction. Modernist narratology intertwined with brevity and allusive implication of the form of short fiction along with feminist violation of patriarchal language draws upon the aesthetics of distraction by sequencing contradictory modes of reception and faculties of discursive and sensuous entities. This illustrates how Melanctha distributes a patriarchal discursive self on one side and drawing on sensuous images of women’s desire on the other. To reify the contradictory conglomeration, I classify “Melanctha” as a feminist tragic short fiction, situating it at the intersection of traditional tragedy and modern feminist short fiction. Within the classification, “Melanctha” continuously has its generic boundaries blurred and ultimately expanded by incorporating contradictory perceptions and sensibilities, deviating from readers’ expectation for genre, language, and woman. As a result, the authority of tragic tradition is replaced by new perceptions brought about by the shock effect which is derived from the deviated expectations and archetypes, leading to experimental language as well. The newly offered perception through distraction and epiphany renders the stories political in that it produces and disseminates the perceptible that was once imperceptible. Reinforced by the density of the form of short story and counter-ideological resistance, the moment of epiphany in “Melanctha” enacts literary politics.

Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name as an Autoethnography

( Meeyoung Kang ) 한국영어영문학회 2020 영어 영문학 Vol.66 No.3

Audre Lorde’s Zami (1982) is an autobiographical novel in which the author draws extensively on her life experiences as an African American lesbian writer. Due to the autobiographical dimensions within the work, scholars have previously critiqued Zami as a genre text, reading the book specifically as a female memoir, a lesbian novel, a queer coming- out Bildungsroman, a slave narrative or, broadly, a novel of black feminism. Beyond these conventional approaches, this essay instead focuses on some of the ways in which Lorde’s personal experiences and memories are comprehensively shifted into larger rubrics (cultural, political) in both realistic and abstract styles. Taking a poststructuralist approach to language and the world on one side, while identifying ancestral, cultural, and mythic strata on the other, Lorde violates any so-called conventional form of autobiography. Read in these critical contexts, Zami can be critiqued as a counter-narrative actively transgressing a suite of oppressions. This is no simple autobiography, and at the intersection of conflicting forces, there appears her relationship with her mother, a connection which serves as a symbolic nexus wherein the personal and the collective are combined. When read through an autoethnographic lens, ostensibly contradictory impulses are reconciled: Zami stages and codifies narratives of both oppression and liberation.

The Political Aesthetics of John M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea

Kang Meeyoung 대한영어영문학회 2019 영어영문학연구 Vol.45 No.4

John M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea is a tragedy about Maurya, who loses her male family members—including her father-in-law, husband, and sons—in the sea. Contrary to many critics’ views that this is naturalistic literature that emphasizes the power of destiny and circumstance over human lives, this paper aims to demonstrate Synge’s affirmation of Maurya’s transcendent human power through the lens of aesthetics. To accomplish this, I define this play as a tragedy which enacts the sublime aesthetics. Notably, both the play and the sublime aesthetics have a dual structure, pain and pleasure, which ultimately emphasizes human reason. By virtue of this aesthetic approach, the protagonist, Maurya, appears as a rational woman transcending the most tragic situation. And given that Maurya is a woman who stands for Ireland itself, this approach leads to a new political interpretation, to wit: this play engages in postcolonial strategies by appropriating the gendered bias of tragedy and the sublime, which were hostile to women. As an appropriated form of the sublime, this play represents the type of Irish nationalism Synge had in mind both aesthetically and politically.

Aesthetic Distraction in Gertrude Stein’s “Melanctha”

Kang Meeyoung 한국영어영문학회 2019 영어 영문학 Vol.65 No.3

Beyond the antithetical distinction between modernist and realist approaches on Gertrude Stein’s “Melanctha,” I elucidate how the two seemingly incompatible perspectives interrelate, enacting the aesthetic of distraction. Modernist narratology intertwined with brevity and allusive implication of the form of short fiction along with feminist violation of patriarchal language draws upon the aesthetics of distraction by sequencing contradictory modes of reception and faculties of discursive and sensuous entities. This illustrates how Melanctha distributes a patriarchal discursive self on one side and drawing on sensuous images of women’s desire on the other. To reify the contradictory conglomeration, I classify “Melanctha” as a feminist tragic short fiction, situating it at the intersection of traditional tragedy and modern feminist short fiction. Within the classification, “Melanctha” continuously has its generic boundaries blurred and ultimately expanded by incorporating contradictory perceptions and sensibilities, deviating from readers’ expectation for genre, language, and woman. As a result, the authority of tragic tradition is replaced by new perceptions brought about by the shock effect which is derived from the deviated expectations and archetypes, leading to experimental language as well. The newly offered perception through distraction and epiphany renders the stories political in that it produces and disseminates the perceptible that was once imperceptible. Reinforced by the density of the form of short story and counter-ideological resistance, the moment of epiphany in “Melanctha” enacts literary politics.