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The Confucian Difference: Yin/Yang Feminism in Korean Women's Dramas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Extract

In an answer to the question, ‘Who are we as women?’, Western feminisms have developed diverse theories. Appropriating post-structuralist theories, Linda Alcoff rearticulates female subjectivity as positionality, thus avoiding essentialism and yet including a historical dimension in her configuration. Allison Weir calls for a reformulation of the concept of women's identity which includes difference, connection and heterogeneity. Thus, the issues of meaning and interpretation regarding the concept of woman seems to occupy the central locus in the discussions of Western feminisms.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1999

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References

Notes

1. Alcoff, Linda, ‘Cultural Feminism Versus Post-structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 13, No. 2, 1988, pp. 105–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Weir, Allison, Sacrificial Logics: Feminist Theory and the Critique of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1996).Google Scholar

3. In April 1998, the Korean government decided to pay reparations to about 200 surviving Korean ‘comfort women’, and thereby cleared the air regarding Japanese right-wing allegations that the reparations movement is motivated by monetary consideration.

4. Cho, Un, ‘Education Journal Written by a Sociologist Mother’, Women's News, 11 04 1997, p. 16.Google Scholar

5. Buckley, Sandra, Broken Silence: Voices of Japanese Feminism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 280.Google Scholar

6. Simone de Beauvoir's La Femme rompue (Woman in Crisis) was translated and adapted by Jung Bock-keun, directed by Yim Yong-woong, performed at the Sanwullim Theatre, Seoul, Korea, 1986.

7. This expression gained currency in the 1980s in Korea when the frequent occurrences of the crime began to attract media attention. It describes the usual consequences of the crime involving the rape of a wife by her husband, namely, the ensuing divorce and disintegration of a family, but it also has an ironic connotation, prescribing such an end.

8. Choi Young-Ae (Director of the Korean Centre for the Prevention of Sexual Violence), personal interview, 10 February 1999.

9. Jung, Bock-keun, Wenil Iseyo, Tangsin? (What Is the Matter With You, Honey?), unpublished script (1988), p. 2.Google Scholar Subsequent references appear in the text.

10. Park, Wan-so, Tangsin un Ajikto Kumkugo Itnunga? (Are You Still Dreaming, Dear?), unpublished script (1988), p. 79.Google Scholar

11. Lee, Ju-sil, Sangkorang Malkorang, Ipol Yonsup (Goddammit, Practising Leave-Taking), unpublished script (1996), p. 12.Google Scholar Subsequent references appear in the text.