• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1123-1137
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• 2009

Revisiting the horror of slave mutiny in nineteenth century America via Julia Kristeva's concept of abject, this essay examines abject fear in Amasa Delano and Babo's subversive act to deceive Delano in Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno." Babo, the slave, exercises subversive power, thereby reversing racial hierarchy aboard the slave ship-the San Dominick. Babo's ability to mimic and control racial stereotypes exposes how nineteenth-century racial hierarchy was only a social fiction, which becomes the very source of Delano's fear. Delano's dread belies upon the possible disruption of social order triggered by Babo'sblack rebellion. In order to repress his fear, Delano consciously and unconsciously attempts to re-inscribe white dominion and reaffirm black inferiority and stereotypes by means of rationalizing the disturbing signs he witnesses on the San Dominick. When Delano discovers the realsituation of the ship, he must relinquish the abject resonance that disturbs the previous racial order. Employing a legal document, Delano re-inscribes the official position of the blacks as slaves, defining them as violent savages, and thereby silences Babo. However, Melville's text is not a testament to white power. "Benito Cereno" actually endorses abject instability to challenge racial hierarchies through the poignant image of Babo's dead gaze in the last scene of the novella. Thus, "Benito Cereno" exemplifies the recurring power of abject as a threat to social hierarchy and as a constant reminder of the falsity and insecurity of a social order.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.365-389
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• 2014

The essay focuses on the relationship between the soldiers and the oppressed women in Lynn Nottage's Ruined (2009) in terms of Julia Kristeva's abject to show how the abjected Congolese women expose the falsehood of the order and identity that the military forces try to construct and maintain by war and violence. According to Kristeva, the abject is something that is rejected for the repulsion and horror it arouses but constantly draws the subject to it at the same time. Physically impaired and socially stigmatized, sexually abused Congolese women find a shelter in Mama Nadi's bar, the only place where they can continue their lives as the abject since the place, like the women themselves, lies outside the symbolic order occupied and corrupted by the men of DRC. Although the men involved in the armed conflict have abjected the women in pursuit of their own system and order, the women are not simply the objects of abuse and oppression. The men have to rely on Mama Nadi and her women not only to reaffirm their identity and power by suppressing them but also to fulfill their biological needs. In addition, the women's resistance against the soldiers demonstrates their power to challenge the men's symbolic order and expose its frailty. Apropos of the abject's resistance, various artistic genres such as poetry, music and dance appear in the play as an escape from the grim reality and a means of challenging and transcending the symbolic order. Bringing all these artistic elements together into a powerful piece of theatre-often considered as an 'abject' genre nowadays, Nottage demonstrates both the power of theatre as well as the tenacious Congolese women.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.77-101
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• 2018

Even in our modern era, the projection of monsters in the recent literature contains the critical imagination of human existence for the posthuman age. The meaning of the monster-abject, especially as from the perspective of feministic criticism, contains criticism of the violent and oppressive patriarch as observed in the modern times. This article focuses on the gendered imagination of the discussions of the "abject" discussed by Julia Kristeva, and the "monstrous femine" discussed by Barbara Creed. Kim Eon-Hee's poems and Han Kang's novels, which have been examined extensively for analysis, show that the practical strategy of abject that goes beyond hate and sublime, wonder and joy through the imagination and concepts of monsters. The monster-abject strategy of Kim Eon-Hee's poem can be summarized by the narrative method of mirroring and the imagination of the truncated body. Mirroring falsification, which mimics the male speaker, is a method that some feminists strategically utilize in relation to the problem of female aversion in recent years as noted in the literature. In Kim Eon-Hee's poem, "becoming a man" and "imitating a man," through the method of mirroring appear as an image of cutting to dismantle the body. In that way, the narrative strategy of the abject that draws out abominations and bizarre effects which contains a strong critique of the patriarchal dominant ideology. The monster-abject strategy of Han-Kang's novel is embodied through the being of plants and the process of vegetarian-anorexia process. The world of the adject which was oppressed in the Han-Kang's novel, returns to the senses of the body through the symbol of the body. It is noted that the fictional characters who realize the repressed desire through the pathological symptom expressed by the female, go on to body perform active transformation. The sense of a body in a novel is not only a rejection of the world of animalman-civilization, but also a radically questioning of the noted and recognized boundaries between human beings and non-human being entities. The two writer's works show that the imagination of the monster-adject is not limited to rejecting the existing gender categories, but also goes in the direction of exploring the possibilities of various associated gender actions.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.483-507
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• 2018

Shylock in Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice has been considered as either a devilish villain, or as a victim who was persecuted unfairly by the Christian society in Venice. By focusing on the matter of the Other, which has been summarily overlooked in literary texts and the literary criticism, it is noted that the New Historical and Cultural criticism interpreted Shylock as the racial, religious, and economic Other in the Venetian society which at the time was dominated by Christian ideals. The purpose of this paper is to show how Shylock becomes an abjected Other, that is, the abject, based on Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection. According to Kristeva, an abjection is the process of expulsion of otherness from society, through which the subject or the nation tries to set up clear boundaries and establish a stable identity. Shylock is marginalized and abjected by the borders drawn by the Venetian Christian society, which in a strong sense tries to protect its identity and homogeneity by rejecting and excluding any unclean or improper otherness. The borders include the two visible borders like the Ghetto and the red hats worn by the Jews, and one invisible border in the religious and economic fields. By asking for one pound of Antonio's flesh when he can't pay back 3,000 ducats owed, Shylock tries to cross the border between Christians and Jews. Portia frustrates Shylock's desire to violate the border by presenting a different interpretation of the expression, 'one pound of flesh,' from Shylock's interpretation. And in doing so she expels him back to his original position of abject.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.53-94
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• 2021

This article pays attention to the gender representation of an abominable male abject that reveal class polarization in the movie Parasite. I seeks to read a new aspect of emotional politics in which a precariat man becomes a male patriarch while representing himself with an abhorrent position. Parasite shows a reversal of daughter and son responsible for parents, contrary to the existing family narrative. They teaches the parents' generation how to survive neoliberal that their place is created only when they take away others' place. However, after losing this prospect, Ki-woo confesses to his father that he is sorry first. Ki-taek also attempted to identify Dong-ik with the patriarch, but this male solidarity collapsed by class and committed murder in sudden anger. As a result, Gi-taek goes down to the hateful status of a stinking underground life, and Ki-woo receives a message of ethical reflection from his isolated father. The film gives the father and son the noble status of ethical fighter who fought against the structure of class polarization, especially the ending epilogue and narration emphasizing the ethical responsibility and mutual solidarity between father and son. In this process, the voices of female characters are gradually omitted, blurring gender screening for male characters. Parasite reveals the political reenactment strategy of precariat men in the age of neoliberalism, which is ethical subject by claiming to be a class abject himself. And representing the hate with gender-selecting, it is beautifying the responsible ethics of the patriarch.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.19-30
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• 2002

This is the research of Abject Art which was originated aesthetically in Abjection Theory of Julia Kristeva, a french psycho-analyst who argued liberational discussions about feminine identity against patricentric ideology which had fastened existing beautiful and elegant oedipal-feminine image and femininity as the secondary sex or the other's sex. and which became known by the planning display at whitney Museum of American in 1993. In Julia Kristeva's Abjection Theory which was written in her book(Power of Horror : An Assay on Abjection, 1992), she named pre-oedipal stage in which there is no sexual difference and has the same significance to both sexes instead of the oedipal stage which is becoming male-supreme reality as the semiotic and reinterpreted that an infant disregards feminine body--mother's body (Julia Kristeva, named it as Chora) as the love and the pain which carries her baby in herself and creates the baby which belonged to herself--which belongs to the semiotic to enter the symbolic smoothly. So the Abjection art is partly consist of some works which express the concertion of the boundary rebated with infant Identity which is not yet the other perfectly nor the subject perfectly, and of some works called Excretory Arts which express the excretion and vomiting which is the original experience of the abject. I expect that this research can be the chance of breaking from the fastened identity which was granted on female and feminine costume in this masculine-view centric society and creating the new position of costume and dress in the field of art by analyzing the costumes especially among these works.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.517-522
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• 2012

The work to be analyzed in this study is an animation showed in 2006, which was made by Director Satoshi Kon on the basis of a Japanese SF novel written by Yasutaka Tsutsui. The key point is to create a new meaning through showing imaginative power of audiences from the world flying across the borderland between reality and fiction. It regarded suitable for analysis of the borderland appearing in the unconscious world of dream and reality through "abjection". Therefore, this study intends to analogize the conclusion through analysis of the animation focusing on the theory of Julia Kristeva. Abject appears as the phenomenon which cannot be disappeared and the one threatening to disunite which the subject had already organized in the symbolic. The self-feeling of characters is not stable and it keeps watch constantly on the one which may neutralize his caution. They are looking for the power to strengthen the life granting to the subjecthood by chora as the resisting power against the symbolic order. That is, the dreaming space where revengeful power of primitive libido is working and shows mother as Paprika as well as enters through DC mini, works as the semiotic chora as "maternal body". The healing of mental lack in the symbolic caused from here is connected on the borderland to divide between meaning and meaningless as well as normality and abnormality in the semiotic and this is the maternal power of the semiotic. Therefore, "abjection", "abject" and "chora" as well as care and healing of the other self appearing in the subjectivization process in the can be regarded as the one caused from the love towards the subject to be analyzed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.59 no.5
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• pp.53-70
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to analyze the expressional traits and meanings of body images in contemporary fashion illustration, based on postmodern body theories and body images in postmodern art. For achieving the purpose, this study performed related research works and undertook a demonstrative analysis of fashion illustrations. The results are as follows : The postmodern body theories not only opposed, deconstructed the traditional concepts and norms of body, but also revealed the suppressed facts of it. Also they composed the new concepts of body. The expressional traits of body images in postmodern art and contemporary fashion illustration were categorized as realistically presented body, distorted/deformed body, fragmented body, abject body, post-gendered body and absent body. Through these traits, the meanings of defiance to authority, revelation of reality, new creation were expressed. In conclusion, the various body images in contemporary fashion illustration reflect open concepts for human beings and give new aesthetic experiences.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.41 no.10 s.188
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• pp.85-100
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to analyze the aesthetic characteristics of grotesque images in fashion specially focused on the postmodern grotesque with the relationship between body and fashion. The results are as follows: The postmodern grotesque fashion images in the years of 1990-2000 can be analyzed as trans-stylistic, trans-boundaries which have been set by the modem western white elite men group. The postmodern grotesque fashion images in the years of 1990-2000 can be categorized as 1) unclear boundaries between genders: body and dress; human being and non-human being; life and death; wholeness and fragmentation; clear body and abject body. 2) violence to the body: body mutation by simplification, exaggeration; body injury.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.75-86
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• 2000

In evolutionary algorithm, there exist various models for the evolution of the population with respect to schemes and strategies for reproduction. In the application of the algorithm to a specific problem, one model suitable to the problem is to be properly chosen and a program expert or a software is needed to help implement and test a designed algorithm. In this study, abject oriented modeling and the class library for simple evolutionary algorithms(SEA) with one population is developed. The library proposed here can be used as a generalized tool for solving problems in a wide range of domains.