{"title":"Revisiting the Realism/Modernism Debate: Marxist Thought and the Ethics of Representation","authors":"Hyeryung Hwang","doi":"10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.293","url":null,"abstract":"In Utopian Generations: The Political Horizon of Twentieth-Century Literature (2005), Nicholas Brown remarks on the difference between realism and modernism as one that expresses a conflict between “a responsibility to historical truth” and “a fidelity to the formal energies released by the emergence of a form of subjectivity liberated (or alienated) from historical consciousness” (182). This raises several issues that might be useful for us to develop since, despite the emergence of diverse critical lines of thought since the development of postwar critical theory, realism and modernism have continued to affect the intricately interconnected modes of philosophical and political attitudes towards the relation between aesthetics and politics. Marxist thinkers, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, and Fredric Jameson, among others, explored the dichotomy of realism and modernism in terms of the dialectic of form and content. While they shared that there is an essentially inextricable relationship between literature and the underlying contradictions of our society, how they described the aesthetic expression of social contradictions was distinct, leaving the important question unanswered: “what does it mean to be ‘real’?” In this paper, I revisit the realism-modernism debate to explore this fundamental antagonism to see how these thinkers help clarify the following issues: what is realist form, and what are its features? How does realism negotiate the history of aesthetic forms? Are “formal energies,” as Brown puts it, by themselves an attempt to be free of “historical consciousness” or ones that, as form, highlight historical consciousness? And finally, how does realist form make political action possible? These questions also help us see what it means that the aesthetic choices of an older realism have been persistently replicated after modernism in the global periphery.","PeriodicalId":409687,"journal":{"name":"The Criticism and Theory Society of Korea","volume":"22 22","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140409620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring Everything, Everywhere, All at Once in the Deleuzean Light of Pure Becoming and Affect","authors":"Jae-seong Lee","doi":"10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.261","url":null,"abstract":"The film Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, which received tremendous praise and won seven Oscars at the 95th Academy Awards, offers an expansive exploration of science fiction, comedy, and a profound investigation into love. This movie goes beyond the typical SF and family drama genres, providing audiences with a reflective experience that encourages a deeper exploration of life’s facets. Centering on family ego conflicts and set against a multiverse backdrop, it challenges the binary concepts of morality. \u0000This paper endeavors to understand true love and identity through “ethical deconstruction” and “postmodern ethics,” particularly employing Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concepts of “becoming” and “virtuality,” along with thought from Emmanuel Levinas and the issue of the sublime. The story begins with the dissatisfaction of the Wang family and follows their journey across multiple universes, unveiling the complexities of identity and choice. The work is explained through Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “becoming,” symbolized by a circular motif representing an endless dynamic process. The narrative emphasizes Evelyn’s transformative journey, challenging the fixed notions of good and evil, and aligns with Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism. Her experiences across universes represent not just shifts in identity but the embodiment of Haecceity, the unique essence of each moment. The film’s narrative is interpreted to showcase the concept of “pure becoming,” emphasizing the transformative role of emotions and experiences beyond moral binaries, inviting viewers to participate in a journey of becoming that leads to empathy and understanding. Exploring Everything, Everywhere, All at Once through Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophies in this way highlights the film’s distinctiveness in exploring identity, love, and existence, allowing viewers to deeply understand and feel moved on an emotional and spiritual level.","PeriodicalId":409687,"journal":{"name":"The Criticism and Theory Society of Korea","volume":"24 51","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140408848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Huxley’s Vision of Gender Utopia and the Philosopher-Ruled State in The Brave New World","authors":"Hyun June Cho","doi":"10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.205","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the vision of gender utopia presented in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and explores its utopian possibilities in Mustapha’s World State, which is compared to the philosopher-ruled state in Plato’s Republic. The theme of utopia has been approached differently in liberalism and socialism: liberal utopia prioritizes individual freedom, while socialist utopia emphasizes egalitarian community. The World State in The Brave New World abolishes patriarchy with advanced scientific and technological civilization and depicts a gender utopia without female reproductive labor, emotional labor, and care labor, while the actual main woman characters such as Lenina and Linda suffer pain and death. Therefore, Huxley’s World State represents an ideal gender utopia, while the female characters are evaluated based on their appearance and live tragic lives due to excessive national norms enforcing order. On the other hand, Mustapha’s World State embodies some of the ideal state described in Plato’s Republic, and the two polities are similar in that they are class societies based on stability ruled by philosophers. However, the World State places too much emphasis on community stability, suppressing individual freedom, emphasizing sensual pleasure rather than spiritual happiness, Eudaimonia of Plato’s polity. Eventually, Huxley’s utopia has an ideal structure of gender equality, but the women living there are not so happy. Although it is excellent in terms of stability and efficiency as an ideal politeia ruled by a philosopher, it has limitations that its educational method is rather oppressive, only indulges in pleasure, then represents a failed gender utopia in the end.","PeriodicalId":409687,"journal":{"name":"The Criticism and Theory Society of Korea","volume":"4 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140409787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"9·11 and 3·11, or at Ground Zero of Literature: Essays on the Theory of Disaster Literature 1","authors":"Hyoung Cheol Shin","doi":"10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.51","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.51","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, the term “disaster literature” is narrowly defined: works submitted in response to actual historical disasters. Disaster literature will reflect the factual aspects of real disasters, and of particular importance will be the patterns of human behavior in times of disaster, rather than the disaster itself. This can be divided into social solidarity and social conflict. Disaster literature is a dual response to this. It joins or creates social solidarity and intervenes in social conflict to dismantle its basis. The first type can be called ‘healing narratives’. It verbalizes the suffering of the victims, gives it a figure and allows it to exist in the public sphere. The role of the healing narrative is to mediate social solidarity. The second type of narrative can be called ‘counter-narrative’. When a particular perception/narrative of disaster takes the place of the dominant narrative and triggers social conflict, disaster literature as a counter-narrative participates in the social narrative struggle by offering a different way of thinking about disaster (alternative disaster perception). This paper examines works that fulfil their roles as healing narratives and counter-narratives by taking the September 11 attacks and the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami as symbolic cases of social and natural disasters in the 21st century. In doing so, we will test the effectiveness of the concepts presented in this paper and lay the groundwork for the development of a theory of disaster literature.","PeriodicalId":409687,"journal":{"name":"The Criticism and Theory Society of Korea","volume":"22 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140411214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Study on Neuroscience and Memory in E.L. Doctorow’s Andrew’s Brain","authors":"Dae-Joong Kim","doi":"10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.5","url":null,"abstract":"This study aims to apply neuroscience research on memory to analyze E.L. Doctorow’s contemporary novel, Andrew’s Brain. Drawing upon insights from neuroscience, particularly Veronica O’Keane’s “The Rag and Bone Shop: How We Make Memories And Memories Make Us,” the essay delves into the central motif of memory in literature, such as Marcel’s poignant recollection of his grandmother triggered by a madeleine cake. Veronica O’Keane’s exploration of memory function through neuroscience elucidates how sensory stimuli activate memory in the brain, with numerous literary references providing context. In Andrew’s Brain, the protagonist Andrew, a cognitive scientist, undergoes a confession to Doc, a psychiatrist, revealing his struggles with memory and consciousness. However, as an unreliable narrator, Andrew’s confession is deceptive. This essay seeks to dissect Andrew’s confession, examining his confused memory and psychiatric issues through the lens of brain science. Additionally, it delves into the concept of collective memory and its political implications, particularly focusing on the novel’s satire. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the study aims to shed light on the intricate interplay between neuroscience, literature, and societal commentary found within Andrew’s Brain.","PeriodicalId":409687,"journal":{"name":"The Criticism and Theory Society of Korea","volume":"2 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140413785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Impossible Rebirth: The Subjectivities in the Age of Finance Capitalism in The Razor’s Edge","authors":"Ilsu Sohn","doi":"10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.27","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes how Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge (1944) represents the advent of finance capitalism during the interwar years. Specifically, this paper pays attention to a series of subjectivities featuring the social milieu based on finance capital set loose over the globe. Maugham has been criticized for focusing on the characters’ externals in a conventional fashion. As a result, he has been marginalized from the academic discourse on the early twentieth-century literature dominated by modernist studies. This paper will prove that Maugham’s attention to the externals is part of his literary design for effectively representing characters who embody the uncontrolled and perpetual proliferation of finance capital without an independent and reflective consciousness. In particular, Larry, the novel’s central character, becomes disillusioned with the declining Western civilization and then travels to foreign soils in search of the opportunity to be symbolically reborn. This paper will prove that the novel eventually debunks the fetishistic nature of this imperial search and unveils it as another cultural expression of supranational finance capitalism. Ultimately, this paper aims to contribute to the reevaluation of Maugham’s literary achievement by highlighting his pioneering representation of the post-modern world.","PeriodicalId":409687,"journal":{"name":"The Criticism and Theory Society of Korea","volume":"59 23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140414874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the Creative Evolution of Modern Literature:Reading Austerlitz","authors":"Hui-sok Yoo","doi":"10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.81","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.81","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is an analytic exploration of W. G. Sebald’s only full-length novel, Austerlitz; a reading to faithfully follow the narrative aspect that goes against the grain of Holocaust testimonial literature. If Sebald has gone beyond testimony to the point of interrogating the Western colonial modernity, then the perusal of Austerlitz must be a great challenge. The narrative, centered around the first-person speaker believed to be Sebald with his attendant eponymous character, Austerlitz, relentlessly reinforces the awareness that the Holocaust is a phenomenon that originated from the Western spirit rooted in the Descartean rationalism. Thus Austerlitz can be re-evaluated as a critique of the fundamental logic of Western modernity and also an attempt to heal its disastrous aftermath. In this vein, Austerlitz is remarkably suffused with architectural meditations; the highly concentrated thoughts on various monumental buildings in countries that once ruled as colonial empires, such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France, lead to criticism of the origin of Auschwitz. Hence the analysis is focused on the world-view of the Western colonial modernity that perpetrated ‘the Shoah’ in an unprecedented and unparalleled enormity. The upshot of this paper; the narrative of Austerlitz with his first-person narrator remains an outstanding example of the creative evolution in the field of modern literature today.","PeriodicalId":409687,"journal":{"name":"The Criticism and Theory Society of Korea","volume":"20 40","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140409220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Judith Butler and the Ethics and Politic of Bodies: Vulnerability, Precarity, and Open Solidarity","authors":"Haeook Jeong","doi":"10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.169","url":null,"abstract":"This study commences by engaging with Judith Butler's critical inquiry into the enduring significance of the body amidst the rapid advancements in fields like Neuralink and generative AI. Butler’s early works including Gender Trouble, Bodies that Matter, and Excitable Speech, extensively investigate the ‘resignification’ of oppressive norms and coercive interpellations, a focus that initially seemed to underplay the role of physical embodiment. Since Precarious Life(2004), however, Butler’s scholarship has notably shifted to more explicitly incorporate the bodily dimension. She extends her inquiry beyond the ‘re-signification’ in language and discourse to explore how the body itself can exert influence and drive transformative change in the world. \u0000This paper aims to explore contemporary reflections on the body's politics, especially in the context of global events like the pandemic. It examines Butler’s recent works, including What World Is This?, to understand how the body's openness, vulnerability, interdependence, entanglement, and porosity may catalyze transformative shifts towards a more livable world. The paper also examines the unequal distribution of precarity and potential solidarity forms among bodies as a form of resistance. \u0000To fulfill these aims, the paper first reviews Butler’s views on bodies during the pandemic, drawing on phenomenologists like Maurice Merleau-Ponty, with a special emphasis on corporal sensory perception, interdependency, and interconnectedness. It then introduces the concept of precarity to deepen the discussion on the body’s politics. Furthermore, it evaluates forms of solidarity, exemplified by movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #NiUnaMenos, to explore how Butler’s theory advocates for an open solidarity that moves beyond identity politics. The study concludes by assessing how Butler’s insights provide timely and profound contributions to the current era of crisis.","PeriodicalId":409687,"journal":{"name":"The Criticism and Theory Society of Korea","volume":"12 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140411003","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Political Claim of Deleuzean Shame","authors":"Woosung Kang","doi":"10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.229","url":null,"abstract":"The primary aim of this paper is to present the political implication of Deleuze’s idea of shame as the affect of resistance through masochistic withdrawal. Shame, for Deleuze, is clearly distinct from the feeling of guilt in that it does not concern with the pleasure of suffering and self-punishment caused by the breach of prohibition. Indeed, Deleuze makes lots of efforts to save the affect of shame from being co-opted by the psychoanalytic notion pairing off with the feeling of guilt and the pleasurable pain ensued from the Oedipal punishment. Deleuze’s separation of shame from guilt coincides with his lifelong struggle with the pleasure principle of psychoanalysis and its constant Oedipalization. Another crucial dimension of Deleuze’s deterritorialization of psychoanalysis in terms of shame is the break-up of the pathological bind between sadism and masochism. Especially, Deleuze unties the ontological affect of masochism and the literality of pain from sadistic, reactive, and sexualized aggressivity which is primarily dependent on the guilt and the pleasure of punishment. Masochistic shame is newly valorized by Deleuze as the powerful resistant weapon of the minorities whose act of withdrawal from the demand of capitalist discourse constitutes the very basis of political resistance. The political implication of Deleuze’s notion of masochistic shame becomes doubly significant when it is connected to the rhythm of pain in passive synthesis; masochist contraction, like Bartleby’s inaction, against ego, pleasure, and globalization helps us to secure and re-establish free, little, local differences in the overall micropolitical resistance to the global law of injunction to enjoyment.","PeriodicalId":409687,"journal":{"name":"The Criticism and Theory Society of Korea","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140411590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"French Theory and Cybernetics","authors":"Taek-Gwang Lee","doi":"10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.19116/theory.2024.29.1.149","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims to identify the relationship between cybernetics and the post-war French philosophies or theories known and embraced as structuralism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism. Recent research has shown that cybernetics was closely associated with Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism, which was the cool of the new French theory, and that poststructuralism or postmodernism was a response to the technologies of control represented by cybernetics. From this perspective, the misconceptions and prejudices surrounding French theory must be confronted with an understanding of the historical context that gave rise to the phenomenon of postmodernism. This paper looks at French theory as an intellectual movement that emerged out of the reflection on cybernetic technologies in the post-war period centred on the Maginot Line and revisits its theoretical context through the keyword cybernetics. This new examination will allow us to rewrite the genealogy of French theories that emerged after 1950 as a response to cybernetics, whether postmodernism is interpreted as a cultural logic of late capitalism, as an extension of modernism, or as a new epistemology inevitably resulting from the decline of modernity. From this perspective, this paper argues that French theory and its effect, postmodernism, should not be buried in the annals of history as relics of a bygone era but should be recognized as a historical legacy shaping our present reality and should be re-examined.","PeriodicalId":409687,"journal":{"name":"The Criticism and Theory Society of Korea","volume":"87 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140411136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}