Ghosts of Camptown
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11271896 |
|---|---|
| Authors | G K Hong, Gou-Juin Hong (University of California, Los Angeles, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 49-67 |
| Publication date | 2014-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mlu025 |
| OpenAlex | W2055638144 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 13 |
This essay engages the deployment of form in Heinz Insu Fenkl’s Memories of My Ghost Brother (1996), focusing in particular on its strategy of embedding fantastical stories within its narrative structure and on the ways in which the mystical or magical tone of these stories pervades the narrative, establishing a frame seemingly incongruous with the memoir’s setting within a military camptown in South Korea. If a classically realist tone and linear narrative arc are the formal expressions of nationalist culture, the autobiographical novel’s departure from these formal strategies, I argue, is necessary to convey the complex juridical status of the camptown. Through a curious excess of state sovereignty, because they are simultaneously under both US and South Korean sovereignty, the camptown and its residents are subject to abandonment by both nation-states, producing a heightened vulnerability to death. Accordingly, such complex relationships to sovereignty demand a narrative form organized around a complex and divided subject unlike the possessive individual at the center of traditional autobiographies, a divided subject formed around an ethics in which no one is blameless and everyone is complicit
Amusement · Archaeology · Art · Brother · Colonialism · Literature · Memoir · Narrative · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Japanese History and Culture · Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez · Psychology
The way of the world
Histoire de la sexualité, Tome I
Ghostly Matters
Korean Workers
Heinz Insu Fenkl's Memories of My Ghost Brother
Sex among Allies
The Social Construction of American Realism
The Vietnam War and the ‘Miracle of East Asia’
Surrogate Military, Subimperialism, and Masculinity
Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,29 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2019 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |