[Literary Criticism] Capitalist Bad Weather and the Sensibility in Transition: On the Power of Poetry To Envision the Future / Oh Youn-kyung
The Quarterly Changbi 199, Spring 2023
Abstract
Literary critic Oh Youn-kyung continues the discussion of the last issue’s feature and deepens our thinking about a newly introduced political character in literature. While discussing how the vast disasters of the pandemic and climate crisis are predominantly symptoms revealing the failure and crisis of capitalism, she draws our attention to recent poems that delicately perceive the “capitalist bad weather.” In particular, based on an understanding that poems can raise political questions, by depicting the distance between a first-person speaker and the world represented by them, she explores the possibility of a literature of transition, leading to a system outside the constraints of capitalism, focusing on poems by Kim Sang hee, Bak Eun-ji, and Hwang You-won.