A Monster Called a Mother — A Deconstructive Approach to Motherhood as Represented in Oh Jung-hee’s Novels

Yi, S. (2021). A Monster Called a Mother — A Deconstructive Approach to Motherhood as Represented in Oh Jung-hee’s Novels. Feminism and Korean Literature, (53), 368-390, https://doi.org/10.15686/fkl.2021..53.368

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Abstract

“Mothers” in Oh Jung-hee’s novels are trapped inside the colony that is the family and live a life of submission to modern maternal ideology. However, they resist the role they are forced to play, while continuing their attempts to escape from oppressive ideologies. The characters are caught in paradoxical situations caused by the contradictory performances of chaos and a way forward, and destruction and reconstruction. They perceive themselves as distorted and deformed beings—that is, as monsters abandoned by society. Therefore, the monstrous women depicted in Oh’s novels are also seen as paradoxical beings. Oh’s female monsters are considered abject beings who have been abandoned and devalued by society. However, they are simultaneously feared as powerful beings who can overthrow the law of the father. Even when the mothers in Oh’s novels are reproduced as something that is abject, they reveal the cold-blooded mother who both gives her children life and takes it away. Mothers who actively seek to become monsters appear to be fearful castrators who threaten masculinity and cruel destroyers who break the boundaries of the castle. The mother is recreated as the “monstrous-feminine” that “shows fear because of her body and production functions, especially her nature as a mother.” Oh’s novels should be interpreted as a journey to discover the power of a forgotten mother, breaking the prejudice of society that has regarded women as abject. The attempt to form one’s identity against a world that oppresses the self is closely linked to posthumanism, which attempts to dismantle the modern ideological form of man/humanity and identify a new basis for existence outside existing limits.

keywords: 비체, 여성괴물, 괴물성, 원초적 어머니, 해체, 포스트휴머니즘, 변신, 체현, 여신, 책 생성, abject, monstrous-feminine, monstrosity, primal mother, deconstruction, posthumanism, metamorphosis, embodiment, goddess, thealogy, bibliogenesis, castration

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Article Contents

No.53

A Monster Called a Mother — A Deconstructive Approach to Motherhood as Represented in Oh Jung-hee’s Novels

Abstract

Reference

Feminism and Korean Literature