In this paper, I propose that national cinema might be discussed as chronotope(Mihail Bakhtin) and performativity(Judith Butler), not as the reflection and construction of national identiy. Why? Because national cinema is the dynamic project and speci...
In this paper, I propose that national cinema might be discussed as chronotope(Mihail Bakhtin) and performativity(Judith Butler), not as the reflection and construction of national identiy. Why? Because national cinema is the dynamic project and specific practice rather than territorial cultural product of the State. Theorizing the performativity of national cinema, this paper propose the new conception of nation, which is not static and mechanical "Imagined Community" (Benedict Anderson), but "Performative Imagined Community" like gender.
For theorizing "Performative Imagined Community", I combine Homi bhabha"s thought of nation with Judith Butler" s thought of gender. Consequently, the nation has ambivalence and limilnal space which is contradictorily crossed and fissured by the pedagogical and the performative, and is the dynamic and discontinuous process that engender unexpected subjectivity through the citation and iterability by agency. Like gender, nation is the changeable and historical constuct which is not fix and unchangeable entity.
In this paper, I analyze the uncanny family film, Father and Sons (Kwon Cheol-Hwi, 1969) as an example of "Performative Imagined Community." In this film, the relation of family is mimicry of the military culture that was started by Park" s a coup detat and spreaded out widely in South Korea on late 60s. Through the ambivalence of mimcry(Homi Bhabha), I analyze process which this film perform the nation. Like a "Drag", that is parodic mimicry of nation is reavealing inconformity, contradiction, and fissure between nation and state. So couling of Nation and State is not nature, essence, and destiny, but disguised character by modem state and capitalism. And by showing unsuccessful project of Park" s regime that interpellate ideologically nation, this film enact that nation is unexpected mobile agency and that national cinema is practice which go beyond homogenizing and nationalizing project by State.