'Mad Women' Locked in the Attic Again: Gender Hierarchy of Alternative Public Scope and the Writing of Young Korean Female Researchers
Tue, June 23, 2:00 to 3:55pm, South Building, Floor: South, S1101Abstract
This paper examines the dilemma of young researchers, particularly the writing of female researchers, as they are required to perform new acts of writing as they stand against the discourse of the crisis of humanities and the neoliberal academic system.
When female researchers attempt to explore their own vision within writings, they are often accused of having an “overinflated ego” or of having acted in “hysteria.” These psychoanalytically charged attacks reinforce conventional narratives given to young female researchers that also points to the fact that their writing must face the impossibility of socialization.
A counter discourse for young writers has spread widely; however, only a few female writers participated and there were no discussions of gender in anyone’s work. Furthermore, when young female activists reorganized alternative cultural communities, "old activists" attacked the "moderateness,” "non-politics,” and "bourgeois taste" of the programs.
Recently, translating Western theories has received fervent responses in academia, especially from young male researchers. This is a symptom of a gendered academia caused by their desire to enter academia through their obsession with new theories and using them as new classic models of a new writing style for a young generation.
This paper attempts to examine how young female researchers can write within this environment as they simultaneously become “the other” by the renewal of a gender hierarchy and an alternative cultural scope.