Abstract

There are beings who vanish in cold rooms alone without a protective layer from family or partners. They vanish not only from private life but from public spheres of career and work. Previous literature has focused on diverse socio-structural factors that make survival impossible including financial crisis, unstable employment,decreasing social welfare, the advent of Neo-fascism, etc. This paper explores the boundary of survivability and the origin and current situation of single life from the viewpoint of gender,especially focusing on the im/possible single life of women writers. The term 'single life' refers to lifestyle but also conveys 'singularity' of subject position and the nature of the existence of female writers as translator-poets (by Jacques Derrida). While paying attention to the single life of women from the late 1980s to now, I investigate how to theorize the political implications involved in women's choice and resolution of their lifestyles and power. In this investigation, I keep in mind also the attitudinal change over feminism in Korea. Just 20 years ago, many Korean scholars had a strong interest in gender issues and they argued, "We need more feminism!" However, nowadays, feminism is no longer the center of attention. This is the case not only in scholarly fields but also in mass media and the public sphere. The dominant perspective on feminism among ordinary people is "We've had enough!" or "No more feminism!" Yet the question “Who does ‘we’refer to in that sentence” challenges that perspective. The more critical issue to handle is from where the attitudinal change over feminism originates, especially regarding power, political position,and the representation of womanhood.