Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T01:49:54.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Deafening Silence of the Korean “Comfort Women”: A Response Based on Lyotard and Irigaray

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2015

Constance Youngwon LEE  and
Jonathan CROWE
Constance Youngwon LEE
Affiliation:
T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia
Jonathan CROWE
Affiliation:
T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article reflects upon the continuing historical denialism concerning the Korean “comfort women” forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. We argue that the refusal of the Japanese government and others to squarely confront this wrong is made possible through the exploitation of a différend in Jean-François Lyotard’s sense of the term. The différend arises from a complex set of social, cultural, and legal sources, including patriarchal, colonial, and nationalistic constructions of the wrong and its victims. We seek to tentatively expose the nature of the différend by identifying these factors. We then sketch the beginnings of a possible response, drawing on Luce Irigaray’s strategy of emphasizing sexual difference and separation to pave the way for reciprocality between the sexes. The testimonies of the “comfort women” must be allowed to speak for themselves before a response can emerge based in other discourses.

Keywords

“comfort women”silencingdenialismJean-François LyotardLuce Irigaray
Type
Research Article
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , November 2015 , pp. 339 - 356
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Tutor and LLM Candidate, T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland.

**

Associate Professor, T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland. The authors thank Siân Littledale and Bonita Wong for their excellent research assistance and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments. A version of this article was presented at the Australian Society of Legal Philosophy Conference at Murdoch University in June 2014. We are grateful to all who participated in the discussion. Correspondence to Jonathan Crowe, T. C. Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia. E-mail address: [email protected].

References

Associated Press (2006) “Memoir of Comfort Woman Tells of ‘Hell for Women’.” China Daily, 6 July.Google Scholar
Bennett, Lerone Jr (1967) “What’s in a Name? Negro vs Afro-American vs Black.” 23 Ebony Magazine 46–48, 50–2, 54.Google Scholar
Carroll, David (1989) Paraesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, New York: Methuen.Google Scholar
Chung, Chin-Sung (1997) “The Origin and Development of the Military Sexual Slavery Problem in Imperial Japan.” 5 Positions 219–255.Google Scholar
Crowe, Jonathan (2004) “Reinterpreting Government Neutrality.” 29 Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 118–139.Google Scholar
Crowe, Jonathan (2013) “The Role of Contextual Meaning in Judicial Interpretation.” 41 Federal Law Review 417–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crowe, Jonathan, & Lee, Constance Youngwon (2013) “Constitutionalism, Power and Equality in Contemporary Korea.” LAWASIA Journal 113–119.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques (1978) Writing and Difference (Alan Bass trans.), London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques (1988) Limited Inc (Samuel Weber trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, William E.B. (1928) “The Name ‘Negro’.” The Crisis, March, 96–97.Google Scholar
Field, Narma (1997) “War and Apology: Japan, Asia, the Fiftieth, and After.” 5 Positions 1–51.Google Scholar
Field, Rachael, & Crowe, Jonathan (2007) “The Construction of Rationality in Australian Family Dispute Resolution: A Feminist Analysis.” 27 Australian Feminist Law Journal 97–122.Google Scholar
Henry, Nicole (2013) “Memory of an Injustice: The ‘Comfort Women’ and the Legacy of the Tokyo Trial.” 37 Asian Studies Review 362–380.Google Scholar
Henson, Maria Rosa (1999) Comfort Woman: A Filipina’s Story of Prostitution and Slavery under the Japanese Military, New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Howard, Keith, ed. (1995) True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women (Young Joo Lee trans.), London: Cassell.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce (1985) This Sex Which is Not One (Catherine Porter trans.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce (1993) An Ethics of Sexual Difference (Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill trans.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce (1996) I Love to You (Alison Martin trans.), New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce (2000) Democracy Begins Between Two (Kirsteen Anderson trans.), London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Joyce, Colin (2007) “Japanese PM Denies Wartime ‘Comfort Women’ Were Forced.” The Telegraph, 3 March.Google Scholar
Jung, Kyungja (2014) Practicing Feminism in South Korea: The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Violence, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kang, Laura Hyun Yi (2003) “Conjuring ‘Comfort Women’: Mediated Affiliations and Disciplined Subjects in Korean/American Transnationality.” 6 Journal of Asian American Studies 25–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Hyun Sook (1997) “History and Memory: The ‘Comfort Women’ Controversy.” 5 Positions 73–108.Google Scholar
Korean Research Institute for Jungshindae (2000) Halmeoni, Gunwianbu Ka Muyeyo?, Seoul: Hankyeore Shinmunsa.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François (1988) The Différend: Phrases in Dispute (Georges Van Den Abbeele trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Maynes, Katrina (2011) “Korean Perceptions of Chastity, Gender Roles, and Libido: From Kisaengs to the Twenty First Century.” 1 Grand Valley Journal of History 1–19.Google Scholar
McDougall, Gay J. (1998) Contemporary Forms of Slavery: Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-Like Practices During Armed Conflict, New York: Report of the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.Google Scholar
Min, Pyong Gap (2003) “‘Comfort Women’: The Intersection of Colonial Power, Gender and Class.” 17 Gender and Society 938–957.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mnookin, Robert, & Kornhauser, Lewis (1979) “Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: The Case of Divorce.” 88 Yale Law Journal 950–997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (2014) “Japan’s Troubling Denial of Comfort Women.” Asia Sentinel, 6 March.Google Scholar
Orreill, Kirsten (2008) “Who Are the Ianfu (Comfort Women)?” 2 New Voices 128–152.Google Scholar
Orwell, George (1946) “Politics and the English Language.” Horizon, April, 252–264.Google Scholar
Park, Won Soon (1997) “Japanese Reparations Policies and the ‘Comfort Women’ Question.” 5 Positions 107–134.Google Scholar
Qiu, Peipei, Su, Zhiliang, & Chen, Lifei (2013) Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sang-Hi, Kim (2000) “Testimony,” in S.C. Schellstede, ed., Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military, New York: Holmes and Meier, 29–35.Google Scholar
Schellstede, Sangmie Choi, ed. (2000) Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military, New York: Holmes and Meier.Google Scholar
Soh, Sarah C. (2003) “Japan’s National/Asian Women’s Fund for ‘Comfort Women’.” 76 Pacific Affairs 209–233.Google Scholar
Soh, Sarah C. (2008) The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Soon-Duk, Kim (2000) “Testimony,” in S.C. Schellstede, ed., Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military, New York: Holmes and Meier, 37–41.Google Scholar
Tanaka, Yuki (2002) Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation, London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ueno, Chizuko (1999) “The Politics of Memory: Nation, Individual and Self.” 11 History and Memory 129–152.Google Scholar
Varga, Aniko (2009) “National Bodies: The ‘Comfort Women’ Discourse and Its Controversies in South Korea.” 9 Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 287–303.Google Scholar
Vickery, Martha (2001) “Leader for the Pioneers: Chung-Ok Yun and the Legacy of the Korean Comfort Women.” Korean Quarterly, Winter, 35.Google Scholar
Walker, Michelle Boulous (2002) Philosophy and the Maternal Body, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Williams, James (1998) Lyotard: Towards a Postmodern Philosophy, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Yoshiaki, Yoshimi (1995) Jugun Ianfu, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.Google Scholar