Christopher P. Hanscom | Impossible Speech: The Politics of Representation in Contemporary Korean Literature and Film

Korea Colloquium

Christopher P. Hanscom
Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Chris Hanscom is a professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA, where he teaches courses on Korean literature and film and is director of the UCLA Korean Humanities Initiative. 

Chaired by Chan Yong Bu, Assistant Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University

Abstract:
The talk reconsiders the relationship between art and politics, particularly in relation to the aesthetic representation of atrocity. Focusing on the genre of Kwangju fiction, Hanscom asks what kind of remembering is adequate to the traumatic event and how the representation of such memory can avoid both a cycle of endless melancholic return and the forgetting that accompanies the “memorization” of history. 

Generously supported by the Sunshik Min Endowment Fund for the Advancement of Korean Literature at the Korea Institute, Harvard University