Colonial modernity and the conundrum of representation: Korean literature in the Japanese empire

要旨

This article explores the problem of representation in colonial encounters and their troubling legacies into the postcolonial present. The object of enquiry is a thus far little-known archive within global discourses on empire: imperial-language literature from colonial Korea under Japanese occupation. The article examines the tumultuous history of the production and consumption of these writings, which garnered significant attention at the height of the Japanese empire, but were then relegated to forgotten status with the empire's sudden collapse and the ushering in of postcolonial Cold War divisions. These controversial writings were produced between the metropole and the colony, between censorship and propaganda, between resistance and collaboration, and between the Korean and Japanese languages; and they have confounded critics past and present. Joining recent critical writings from Korea, Japan, and elsewhere, this article calls for a new methodology that can rethink existing theories of colonial experience, and illuminate the blind-spots created by ongoing postcolonial tensions across geopolitical divides.

主題