13:45-15:00 | Room 707 (7F)
Sunday Session III
Literature/Literary Studies Session Chair: Justyna Weronika Kasza 45186
13:45-14:10 | Room 707 (7F)
Hope and Destruction: A Comparative Analysis of the Consciousness of Death Between Patriotism and Sinking Hoi Ching Chow, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Sinking (沉淪, 1921), the renowned Chinese novel by Yu Dafu was often compared with a Japanese novel, Melancholy in the Country ( 田園の憂鬱, 1919), given that both of them are categorized as I-novel. Nevertheless, another Japanese novel, Patriotism(憂国, 1961) by Mishima Yukio actually shares more similarities with Sinking in the aspects of content and the core theme behind. Both Yu Dafu and Mishima Yukio were obsessed with death as a theme, especially when it is linked with sex. Yet, they reflected two totally different attitudes toward death. The paper presents a further discussion on the consciousness of death shown in these two works. Firstly, it focuses on how the core theme of Patriotism is actually the beauty of death instead of patriotism, and Sinking is the one that talks about patriotism. Then, the differences in the roles played by death in these two works are discussed. It ends with the analysis of the cultural reasons why there is such kind of differences between the Japanese and the Chinese novel. The paper aims to provide a brand new angle for the current academic discussion about Sinking by comparing with a rarely compared Japanese novel. 45783
14:10-14:35 | Room 707 (7F)
The Ethics of Affirmation: Han Kang and Kafka’s Posthuman Metamorphosis Soo Jin Park, Yonsei University, South Korea
My research aims to reopen the questions of the ethics and humanism by examining posthuman metamorphosis from Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. Han Kang and Kafka’s respective works aptly exemplifies the posthuman metamorphic narrative; Kang and Kafka depicts the figures of posthuman that engender novel ways to think human subject in relation to non-human entities. Historically, non-humans served as the mere others for the ontological distinctiveness of human. The posthuman metamorphosis offers a renewed outlook. It critically questions what it means to be human today by offering metamorphic figures that readily embrace the multiple forms: human, non-human animal, and the vegetal. In this research, my argument is twofold: arguing Gregor Samsa and Yeonghye as the figures of posthuman and thereafter re-examining the posthuman ethics and humanism. In both metamorphic narratives, the protagonists are the prototypes of posthuman; they become the multiple figures during the process of transformation, oscillating between human and non-humans. Nevertheless, Gregor Samsa fails to affirm during the metamorphosis while Yeong-hye directs us towards affirmation. By transforming into a tree, Yeong-hye endures the pains of the oppressed female figure, severs the cycle of human violence, and thus reaches her potentia. In this way, her metamorphosis attests to the posthuman ethics in its distinct way. Here I say distinct because Yeong-hye’s affirmation enlarges the scope of posthuman ethics in a more comprehensive way. Han Kang offers a singular way of unfolding the posthuman ethics that has more of an optimistic trace. She not only makes the detour from an apocalyptic doom of the human race, which was originally proposed by the posthuman ethics but also reconfigures it in a way that affirms the humanity and redefines the human subject that potentially works across differences. While the project nudges towards posthumanism, my point is to make it clear why we have to partially think beyond humanism to deal with problems and contradictions fraught within humanistic value and discipline. Humanism hitherto has been tinged with human violence, injustice, and outright human hubris. Haphazard blood had been shed out in the name of ‘humanity,’ as were the war, genocide, and sheer terror. The posthumanity imagined and glimpsed from Gregor Samsa and Yeong-hye may suggest decisive severance from humanism altogether. However, a strand of humanism is precariously secured as Yeong-hye’s affirmation supplants the centrality of ‘Man’ with the relational, transversal human subject; the human violence with the human dignity; and self with the others within the self. Through the lens of critical posthumanism, humanism is critically re-examined, albeit affirmatively. 45700
14:35-15:00 | Room 707 (7F)
From Isolation to the World: The Prospects and Challenges for Literature Engage in Japan Justyna Weronika Kasza, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland
“The duty of literature is to fight fiction. It's to find a way into the world as it is” – states Karl Ove Knausgaard, the author of multi-volume novel My Struggle. But how could literature fight fiction? Does Knausgaard attempt to reinvent the referential character of literature? Could, in accordance with Knausgaard’s line of thinking, “literature” and “fiction” be treated as excluding and contradictory notions? What are the devices, tools, techniques that enable literature to “find a way into the world”? This paper attempts to examine the two trajectories in contemporary Japanese literary criticism represented by Ōno Masatsugu and Ikezawa Natsuki. I treat Knausgaard’s distinction between “literature” and “fiction” as the point of departure to assess the possibilities of reinventing the notion of “committed literature” (as in Sartre’s definition of littérature engagée). The objective is to reconsider Japanese interaction with the world and its input to the contemporaneity. While for Ikezawa “there still exists the sense of isolation” in Japanese literature, Ōno, borrowing the title of Baudelaire’s poem, proposes the route towards “Anywhere out of the world”. Ikezawa and Ōno highlight diverse challenges for Japanese literature. However, their ideas converge in one particular point: the figure of the engaged and compassionate writer. It is the dialogical openness and awareness that offer the possibilities for reclaiming the future, which consists in taking the road from isolation to the world, from oneself to the world of the Other.
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