When the Future Disappears

The Modernist Imagination in Late Colonial Korea
Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-0-231-16518-1
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 304 Seiten, Format (B × H): 231 mm x 159 mm, Gewicht: 556 g

Reihe: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Taking a panoramic view of Korea's dynamic literary production in the final decade of Japanese rule, When the Future Disappears locates the imprint of a new temporal sense in Korean modernism: the impression of time interrupted, with no promise of a future. As colonial subjects of an empire headed toward total war, Korean writers in this global fascist moment produced some of the most sophisticated writings of twentieth-century modernism.

Yi T'aejun, Ch'oe Myongik, Im Hwa, So Insik, Ch'oe Chaeso, Pak T'aewon, Kim Namch'on, and O Changhwan, among other Korean writers, lived through a rare colonial history in which their vernacular language was first inducted into the modern, only to be shut out again through the violence of state power. The colonial suppression of Korean-language publications was an effort to mobilize toward war, and it forced Korean writers to face the loss of their letters and devise new, creative forms of expression. Their remarkable struggle reflects the stark foreclosure at the heart of the modern colonial experience. Straddling cultural, intellectual, and literary history, this book maps the different strategies, including abstraction, irony, paradox, and even silence, that Korean writers used to narrate life within the Japanese empire.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Poole, Janet

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Disappearing Future of Colonial Fascism1. The Unruly Detail of Late Colonialism2. The Sociology of Colonial Nostalgia3. A Private Orient4. Peri-urban Dreams5. Imperialization6. Taking Possession of the Emperor's LanguageEpilogue: AfterlivesNotesSelected BibliographyIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Janet Poole teaches Korean literature and cultural history at the University of Toronto. She has translated the works of many writers from colonial Korea, including Yi T'aejun's Eastern Sentiments.