Porous Language: The Practice of Generative Writing in Kim Nyŏng-hŭi's Short Stories

Abstract

This thesis attempts to introduce the non-canonical Korean woman writer Kim Nyŏng-hŭi (b. 1936), whose literary texts never stop questioning transcendental, self-evident language since her debut in 1961. Kim’s two short stories, “Kainsaengsŏl” (A Theory of Pseudo-life, 1965) and “Pantchok t'aeyang” (Half of the Sun, 2013), will be analyzed with special attention paid to the writer’s sensitivity to the violence of language by locating the texts in the historical and social context of South Korea. In chronological order, I first read the nuanced presentation of a “prostitute” in “Kainsaengsŏl” as Kim challenging the binary of women schema in 1960s’ patriarchal nationalist discourse. Then, a polysemic text “Pantchok t'aeyang” will be analyzed on both textual and structural levels, highlighting Kim’s successful use of defamiliarization and wordplay as a tool to deconstruct “language” in the text. Incorporating Naoki Sakai’s view of translation into my reading of the text, I also attempt to shed light on the active role of the readers as “translators.”