Abstract

Creating Ethnic Hierarchies and Gender Politics Lee, Sun-Ok This article interrogates how nationalist discourse and colonialist discourse often intersect despite their ostensible differences. One can argue that the binary of masculinity and feminity is the oldest and the most familar rhetoric of difference, which can, in turn, naturalize the hierarchies between races, ethnic groups and nations. Therefore, both nationalist and colonial discourses have invested great efforts in incessantly defining and redefining feminity. Without successful manipulation of feminity, neither colonial project nor nationalist struggle could be legitimized. In this article, I investigate how pro-Japanese literatures differently defined feminity from anti-Japanese nationalist literatures. Among the pronationalist literatures, this old rhetoric of male-female hierarchy enabled Lee Ki-young's Chonyoji (virgin land) to legitimize the colonial ethnic hierarchy, and Han Chan-sook's Chowon (grassland) to symbolize imperialism as a savior. In contrast, reversion of gender hierarchy in Han Sul-ya's Daeryuk (continent) resulted in destabilizing ethnic hierarchy. By carefully examining subtle differences among these literatures, this paper aims to rethink the sameness and difference between colonialist and nationalist discourses.