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GENDERING DISPLACEMENT Men, Masculinity, and the Nation It is no surprise to find men with little subjectivity (chuch’esông) because, after all, during the Korean War where were the men? Just hiding in outhouses. —Mi-yôn’s Mother This chapter focuses on a prevailing national and historical narrative: that of male subjectivity (chuch’esông). I consider how male subjectivity—particularly its loss or displacement—works as an actor in the narratives of the women in this book, and in South Korea more generally (see Em 1995; Jager 1996a; and Schmid 1997 on Korean gendered narratives of nation and history ). Beginning with a discussion of male displacement, I then introduce three films in order to elaborate and illustrate the popular and public narration of the loss or displacement of male subjectivity. Next, we will consider gender in national narratives more broadly, and finally the play of these gendered national narratives in Mi-yôn’s Mother’s mobility stories. Men’s Displacement The displacement of male subjectivity is one stream of national narratives with of course its own particular historical, generational, gender, and class coordinates. For the women in this book, male subjectivity refers to both the personal attributes of the men in their lives and, metaphorically, the national and historical narratives. It is in this sense that I choose not to translate “chuch’esông” as “ego”; although in many contexts “ego” would make sense, such a personalized term too easily forfeits its national and histori187 7 7 7 cal references. In Korean, “subjectivity” registers very di¬erently than it does in English: it operates in both the personal and the national range of meaning. A person without chuch’esông refers loosely, for example, to one with little spine, confidence, or sense of self. In another vein, South Koreans equate chuch’esông with national subjectivity or sovereignty. And yet again South Koreans recognize chuch’e sasang (the ideology of chuch’e) as the North Korean o~cial ideology of state autonomy (see Em 1993 and Robinson 1984 on chuch’e). I focus particularly on the loss or displacement of male subjectivity not because all men—or even all of the men who figured in the lives of the women in this book—were displaced, but because this mode of representation is frequently at work in the narratives and gender subjectivities of the women in this book. Specifically, male loss or displacement—physical, material , cultural, and social dislocations—constitutes a grammar for articulating the costs of colonialism, the Korean War, and rapid social transformation in South Korea. I do not mean to say that men su¬ered greater losses—real or symbolic—over the course of Korean contemporary history than did women, or to suggest that the only way to narrate loss or displacement is to focus on men. That chôngsindae (comfort women), for example, have recently become more of a public narrative in South Korea, is a good counterexample (see Kim-Gibson 1999; C. Choi 1997; Soh 2000; see also Jager 1996b on female subjectivity in the narration of the division of the peninsula). I did find, however, considerable interest in the historical loss and su¬ering of fathers and husbands. In this vein, we can recall the Moviegoer on her husband, in chapter 6. The stories of men at the center of their place and times, articulate this theme as well in that they ask what it has taken to preserve subjectivity in twisted times, or during immoral orders, a prevailing theme in Mi-yôn’s Mother’s discussions of her husband in this chapter (see also chapter 9). It would be problematic to claim that all talk of men and displacement refers obliquely to national su¬ering or loss. My suggestion, rather, is that in a patrilineal, patriarchal society such as South Korea with its history of national loss and displacement, it is easy for male subjectivity to take on particular representational salience. In this context, it is revealing to consider how private histories can sometimes speak to these narratives (see J. J. H. Lee 2002). For South Korea, I think that for the generation that came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, this articulation is particularly piqued because of the vivid experience of the Korean War, the recent memory of colonialism, and statist narratives and projects of national renewal and development (see 188 The Melodrama of Mobility [3.140.185.170] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 15...

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