• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.55 no.1
• /
• pp.61-82
• /
• 2009

This paper aims to reexamine the issue of racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, especially in the light of Chinua Achebe's critique of the novella as a racist text entrenched with European prejudices of Africa and its people in his 1975 speech at the University of Massachusetts titled "An Image of Africa." While the novella's indictment of imperial exploitation has been noted from an early stage of its critical reception, its racism had hardly been discussed until Chinua Achebe posed it. Achebe offers the canonized status of the text as a modernist classic, "the most commonly prescribed novel in twentieth-century literature courses," as one reason for its obvious manifestations of racism being glossed over. One may add that Conrad's militant denunciation of imperialist enterprises as "a sordid farce," his seemingly radical stance against imperialism, serves as ideological constraints upon his readers, blinding them to its immanent racism. A closer look at the novella's attack on imperialism turns out to be contradictory, for it also shows such liberal-humanist ideas as the civilizing mission, the work ethic, and the superiority of civilized man, all of which served to prop up European imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century. This ideological contradiction also accounts for Conrad's racist attitude, which is betrayed in his portrayal of Africans as obscure, primitive. Euro-American imperialism has frequently justified itself by recourse to racism, but racism has not always been allied with imperialism. Some staunch racists such as Robert Knox and Arthur de Gobineau went against imperialism, and Conrad proves one of such cases whose critique of imperialism is voiced in ways that can be characterized as racist.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.58 no.5
• /
• pp.903-941
• /
• 2012

This essay examines Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism focusing on the concepts of 'culture,' 'empire,' and 'nation'. The approach is critical, theoretical, and historical rather than explicatory. Consequently, the range of the essay is not limited to Said's own explanation and argument about Western imperialism and its culture presented in the book. In doing this, this essay finally purposes to be a discursive resistance to the current global empire, the United States, via a critical reading of Said's work. Said's notion of culture is set upon to disclose the function of culture as an apparatus of ideological consent of the dominated to the dominant. When applied to imperial practice, Western culture functions to subject the colonized to the colonizer. Said's geographical approach to imperialism complements the historical understanding of imperialism. Imperialism is not only the practice of Western-centered historicism but also the spatially mutual interaction between the West and the rest of the world. Along with European imperialism, Said poses the current global empire of the United States as his main target of criticism. Said's problem is that he takes the United States as a nation-state. When examined, the United States is not a nation-state, but today's empire. The empire in the appearance of the nation-state United States does not work for the interest of the American nation, that is, the American people. The empire is the transnational and postnational political and economic institution that works for the interest of global capital. In order to resist the current global empire, this essay suggests that the building or restoration of nation-states with its basic principle of people's sovereignty is in need.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.57 no.2
• /
• pp.339-365
• /
• 2011

Charlotte $Bront{\ddot{e}}^{\prime}s$ novel Jane Eyre has long been doted on as one of the canonized texts of British literature since its publication. Seemingly, this romantic novel has nothing to do with plantation based on slave trade. However, paying a keen attention to the fact that Jane's enormous inheritance results from wine plantation at a colony, this essay re-interprets Bertha's drinking and madness as evidence of imperialism. For the porter/jin Bertha and Grace Poole enjoy might have some suspicious connection with wine, the very root of Jane's great expectations. Jean Ryes' Wide Sargasso Sea, writing Jane Eyre back, records Bertha as "a white resident of the West Indies, a colonizer of European descent" (326). However, Jane Eyre, in my interpretation, describes Bertha pretty much as a black Creole. At any rate, the view that the white West Indians are tainted by miscegenation proves contemporary racism and is reflected in the text through Bertha and her mother's intemperate drinking and madness. Drinking and madness are stigmatized as the evidence of the so-called "bad blood"; embodying the stereotypes of drinking, madness, and sexual corruption, Creoles, the very inescapable product of imperialism, provide a convenient excuse for justifying imperialism for purity, civilization, and moral cleanness. In this way, Jane Eyre needs to be re-interpreted politically and historically in the context of colonialism. British imperialism pursues a tremendous amount of profits through grape plantation and wine trades; however, it cleverly leaves in the colony the associated images such as intemperate drinking and madness. Bertha, transferred from Jamaica to Britain, takes in these negative images of "savageness." Transcending the narrow confines of feminist criticism obsessed with doubling between Bertha and Jane, this essay, accordingly, reads Bertha the prisoner in the attic as the captive for perpetuating imperialism. This reading hinges upon interpreting Rochester and St John as colonizers bearing the so-called "white men's burden" to cultivate and civilize savages much like crops such as grapes and sugarcane in the colonial plantation.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.54 no.1
• /
• pp.107-127
• /
• 2008

Critics are inclined to interpret J.M. Coetzee's novels in South African contexts, which Coetzee's own background seems to support. One has to bear in mind, however, that Coetzee tends to "see the South African situation as only one manifestation of a wider historical situation to do with colonialism, late colonialism, neo-colonialism." In other words, putting too much emphasis on South African contexts may diminish or undermine significance of Coetzee's multi-layered novels. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to highlight what Coetzee has to say about American colonialism/imperialism and to emphasize importance of "postcolonial rhetoric of simultaneity" which is repeatedly shown in his fictional works. It gives a meticulous attention to and analyzes "Vietnam Project," the first novella of Dusklands, Coetzee's very first novel, which depicts and characterizes "what Chomsky in the context of Vietnam [War] called 'the backroom boys.'" "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee," "When a Woman Grows Older," and Diary of a Bad Year are occasionally brought into discussion as well. This kind of study seems timely and pertinent especially when we take into account the rampant American imperialism which has devastated and almost traumatized the world.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.56 no.3
• /
• pp.501-517
• /
• 2010

This paper examines the British imperialism found in Edith Nesbit's fantasy stories by looking at the function of magic and of the hierarchical relationships seen in the books. Although Edith Nesbit is relatively unknown in Korea, she is widely recognized as having had a great influence on the 20th century British literary world, and is also well-known for her political position as a socialist. Nesbit's fantasy books are commonly differentiated from other Victorian children's books written before her in that she created realistic and liberal children characters and rejected the adult didactic tone. While Nesbit's books have been recognized as revolutionary and being distinguished from other Victorian children's books, I suggest that the ideas found in her fantasy novels largely include the dominant Victorian message of British imperialism. This imperial ideology is delivered by the logic of magic and the multilateral hierarchies. The two magic creatures (The Psammead and the Phoenix) and the two magic items from an Oriental background (the Carpet and the Amulet) all have a magic power to grant people's wishes, wholeheartedly exercising their power and knowledge for the sake of the British characters. While the magic agents serve to fulfill the children's wishes, the children aim to please their parents and to benefit their family, showing layered hierarchies among the characters. Also, there is a hierarchical distinction between the magic items and the magic creatures in that the magic items have no voice to express themselves but only serve and obey the British children. The foreign characters that the children encounter in their adventures also cooperate with the British characters to help them to fulfill their goals. In short, magic frees the children from the adult-centered world but ultimately their free adventures serve their parents and other adults, and represent the ideals and hierarchical concepts of British imperialism. Thus, Nesbit's position as a modern writer seems to be ambiguous, switching between modern characterization and style, and the old Victorian imperial messages that also exist in her fantasy novels.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.57 no.3
• /
• pp.391-411
• /
• 2011

This paper examines Du Boisian critique of American exceptionalism through a close textual analysis of his writings from early essays to later works. As an attempt to respond to the persistent grip American exceptionalism has on both the academia and the intellectual world at large, this paper tries to fill in the gaps within the discourse of American exceptionalism by exploring the works of one of the most towering American intellectual figures, and suggests that the discourse of American exceptionalism has remained within the purview of white scholars. Although at times inconsistent and contradictory, Du Bois's trenchant critique of American civilization and Western imperialism deconstructs the original ideals of America, creating more than a fissure in the ideology/hegemony/state fantasy of American exceptionalism. I argue that Du Boisian critique of American exceptionalism shows its violent marginalization and racialization based on white supremacy. Du Boisian critique should be a cautionary tale for those scholars who talk of "reform" or "replenishment" or even who occlude the possibility that American exceptionalism has not always functioned as a "state fantasy" by assuming its absolute blinding powers.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.54 no.4
• /
• pp.579-597
• /
• 2008

This article discusses David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly as a suggestive text for examining Western masculinity in crisis in the post-imperialist age, in which territorial imperialism is no longer valid. Previous scholarship on M. Butterfly has centered around the interlocking dynamics of imperialism, racism and sexism. Such critical attentions focus on how Hwang deconstructs racialized significations of the East and the West. In these discussions, the issue of gender is often addressed merely as a trope to represent the power relations between the East and the West. As such, gender as well as sexuality is highlighted as the very source of subversion of the power relations. My discussion departs from a critique of the gendered trope of the East and the West, highlighting a postmodern agent, the allegedly feminized character Song Lining: a Chinese actor who passes for a woman for political purposes in postcolonial China. Remaining an "inappropriate/d other" in the gendered imperialist discourse, Song becomes an emergent subject, who is capable of playing gender ambiguity for reclaiming a devalued identity, that of homosexual Asian man. Discussing how the central character Rene Gallimard's masculine identity is constructed in a cross-cultural space and how it evolves, I also argue that Gallimard's melancholic death signifies a historical unsustainability of imperialist masculinity in the postmodern/postcolonial age since World War II.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.56 no.6
• /
• pp.1339-1360
• /
• 2010

An analogical reading of socio-historical context of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker employs some postcolonial discursive analyses of postimperial British capitalistic interests in their post war reconstruction. It is also concerned with causes of so-called broken society. The Caretaker dramatizes minimal actions: a tramp is invited by the elder brother; a job as caretaker is offered; he is reluctant to accept the first offer by the elder brother, but is willing to the second by the younger; eventually, he is excluded because he makes noises while dreaming. These trivial actions produce serious and critical speech acts with their socio-historical implications. The tramp Davies is socially and thereby existentially excluded from the centre of the cold, banished to even colder peripheries. The audience face to the question. Why is Davies excluded? This study tries to answer the question, uncovering deep-rooted capitalistic racism, and reading its symptoms. Even after 50 years The Caretaker was staged, post-imperial broken society tries to operate the betrayals of disparity between the cause and effect of what has gone wrong. Pinter confirms that the action of the play takes place in a house in west London. With the city of London as its capitalistic centre, British imperialism lavished much of its wealth which has only served sectional interests dividing people against themselves. Pinter dramatizes the root of broken society. On the one hand, Pinter foregrounds the very general conflicts between individuals and forms of power; on the other hand, he underlies the very specific strategies of socio-historical exploitation, domination and exclusion.

• 중국학논총
• /
• no.61
• /
• pp.49-75
• /
• 2019

Three types of plural forms are discovered in the ancient literature 《Chung-ui-jig-eon》: propositional plural markers placed in front of the main word - either noun or pronoun, postpositional plural markers placed behind the main word, and pro-/postpositional mixed plural markers. The Mongolian Rule in China during Yuan Dynasty caused the osmotic linguistic imperialism of the Mongolian over the Chinese language. Mongolian language - an Altaiian language which is postpositional - dominantly influenced the Chinese language - which is a propositional language. In addition, the previous usage of '輩', '等', '伟', '满' in Ancient Chinese, made it easier for '每' to be accepted and grammaticalized as a plural marker. The grammaticalization of '每' had been progressed through the reinterpretation of '每' in the structure of 'S(NP)+每+VP'. As a result, '每' had started to be widely used as a postpositional plural ending behind noun or pronoun, regardless of its position in the sentence.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.167-186
• /
• 2006

We live in a global village that requires a language with a genuinely global status as a means of communication. During the twentieth century, English has clearly emerged as the lingua franca owing to both past British political imperialism and the more recent superpower status of the United States. Further contributing to world domination of the English language is the fact that the computer and Internet sprang from the US. Whether you like it or not, you are destined to learn English at least to some extent in order to live in this global village. For the last two decades, one of the most mistaken ideas a number of Korean English teachers have had is that speaking and listening are the primary forms of language, while reading and writing are secondary. In fact, reading is regarded as a skill of much consequence to us since it provides us with access to a huge quantity of information on the Internet, of which at least 80% is written in English. Writing, too, deserves a great deal of attention because we are increasingly called upon to use standard English expressions. As diligent learners of English, we had better not forget the place accorded to language not only as a medium for exchange and constructing information but as a tool for thinking. So we should try to think in English to the point where we have thinking-in-English as a habit, thereby leading to increased familiarity with the language. Such familiarity entails, above all, possessing a command of English.