[Feature] Feminism, Public Life, and Literature / Baik Ji-yeon
The Quarterly Changbi 180, Summer 2018
Abstract
Baik Ji-yeon points out that feminism has now been established as an important indicator of public process in our society, emphasizing that to make sure the publicness should not remain abstract, those violations such as gender discrimination and sexual assault must be contemplated in the context of real lives of women. That is the point where literature can be no other than the commons, and also our valuable common resources would enable us to think of 'real' women problems. Through close analysis of the novels by Park Wan-seo, Hwang Jung-eun, Han Kang, and Choi Eun-mi, in which fierce exploring and pushing boundaries of the lives of female citizens amounts to the practice constituting the commons, Baik successfully addresses the question of what critical interventions should be like in feminist practices as well as feminist theory.