4/9 Colloquium on the Politics of Korean Literature, 5:30-7:15 pm, RSVP
"Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea" (Serk-Bae Suh, University of California, Irvine) Suh discusses the ways in which the visions of anti-utilitarian sacrifice figure in 1970s and 1980s South Korean literature, which range from the idea of sacrifice as an escape from instrumental rationality to the view of literature as a deviation from the mundane world. In doing so, Suh challenges the notion of utilitarian sacrifice, which continues to pervade every aspect of Korean society. He argues that any act of sacrifice for a higher cause is inherently utilitarian, regardless of whether its motives are morally sound or questionable. Suh posits that literature’s relevance to society lies in this seemingly nihilistic sacrifice, viewing literature not as a proxy for politics but as the art of imagination in language.

"Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film" (Christopher P. Hanscom, University of California, Los Angeles) The talk reconsiders the relationship between art and politics, putting forward a definition of the political as a struggle not simply over who is allowed to speak but over the boundaries of intelligibility itself. Treating the ostensibly "non-political" or "non-sensical" moment as the very site of politics and focusing on the aesthetic representation of atrocity,  Hanscom asks what kind of remembering is adequate to the traumatic event and how the representation of such memory can avoid both a cycle of endless melancholic return and the forgetting that accompanies the “memorization” of history.



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