Presented at the Empire of Others Conference, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, March 20-22.

Abstract:

Whereas speech is a ubiquitous metaphor for political representation, broadly conceived, the figure of the “mute” or otherwise speech-disordered body in literary text has typically been read allegorically, as a stand-in for the politically marginalized, often colonial subject. In the case of colonial Korea in particular, Kyeong-Hee Choi has drawn attention to a proliferation of images of disabled bodies in general, arguing that the trope of disability emerges in response to the politically disabling effects of the Japanese empire. While the allegorical function of disability is no doubt valuable, it is nevertheless worth asking how questions of representation—whether political or aesthetic—are complicated when the figuratively voiceless (post)colonial body is literally voiceless as well.

This paper focuses specifically on literary depictions of bodies with disabilities pertaining to speech, ranging from the colonial period to postwar South Korea and the “Zainichi” Japanese diaspora. Attending to the specificity of the non-normative body opens up alternative modes for reading and writing “speech” into the medium of text. I argue that exploring the intersections of ableism and colonialism on the dually othered disabled Korean body can suggest fruitful approaches to the study of intersecting empires in East Asia, particularly Korea at the crossroads of the Japanese and American imperialisms.