Women's Legal Voice

Language, Power, and Gender Performativity in Late Chosŏn Korea

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3634992
AutoresJisoo M Kim (George Washington University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen74
Número3
Páginas667-686
Fecha de publicación2015-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s002191181500056x
OpenAlexW2111914562
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas27

Based on a neo-Confucian vision that the monarch's mandate relied on listening to his people's grievances, the Chosŏn state (1392-1910) empowered subjects regardless of gender or status to address grievances to the sovereign that had not been rectified in lower courts. Contrary to the preconceived notion that women of the Chosŏn were silent subjects outside their domestic boundary, their petitioning activity shows that women, irrespective of their status, had the same legal capacity as their male counterparts to appeal grievances at local and capital levels. This article focuses on women's petitions and their linguistic practices to show how their petitioning activity complicated the gender dynamics of Confucian society. While the gender hierarchy was reinforced through women's narrative strategy as they appropriated the discourse of domesticity, I posit that women as legal agents were regendering legal identity by constructing a sense of personhood via their petitioning practice. Through articulating their gendered narratives, women struggled to defend not only themselves and their own sense of morality but also their entire family

Aesthetics · Identity (music) · Literature · Mandate · Narrative · Performativity · Personhood · Political science · Power (physics) · Sociology · State (computer science) · Asian Studies and History · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law · Marriage and Sexual Relationships