Lashing out Against the Backlash: Constructing a Queer-Timed Narrative in the Affective Space of the Kitchen in Kim Ji-young, Born 1982

Abstract

Recognized as a key text in contemporary South Korean feminist activism, the novel Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 has been invoked in other feminist narratives as a means of “delivering both the revelation of collective trauma and the criteria for reinterpreting what had been experienced through new temporal alternatives to what had been the ‘official’ story’” (Lee 218). However, the novel’s potential “to magnetize a mass awakening” seems to be limited to an endemic context (Lee 218). Though stimulating debate in East Asian countries (Yang 1558), neither the novel nor the film has received enough critical attention internationally. I aim to bridge the gap in current scholarship by analyzing the feminist narrative of Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 in a broader theoretical context. Drawing upon Susan Faludi’s theory on anti-feminist backlash, I explore how the new temporal alternatives opened up by the novel further emerge through the spatial dynamics of the kitchen in the cinematic medium, thereby enabling Ji-young to lash out at the backlash against the film. I first examine, in the context of anti-feminist backlash, the mobilization of negative affect in feminist theory as a means of speaking out against patriarchal oppression. Then, engaging with queer feminist theory, I analyze how a means of openly expressing these negative affects is offered through Ji-young’s mental breakdown, which constructs a queer-timed narrative that transforms the kitchen into a space of female creativity. While exploring the liberating potential of this transformation, at the same time, I reflect upon whether the queer narrative of Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 is effective by questioning the validity of applying a Euro-centric theoretical framework to a film set in an East Asian country.