Abstract

From a humanistic mobility studies perspective, this essay looks at Saryang Kim’s work, “Mulori Island,” in the context of the Pacific War, and explores the “island” produced by a ship’s mobility as it crosses temporal-spatial borders in the story. During the Pacific War, Japanese geopolitical ideology was shaped by the spatialization of time and geographical determinism, found in the propagandized ideas of “Greater East Asia” and “Overcoming the Modern.” Kim’s work is a critical response to this imperialistic ideology in two ways. First, his story critically represents the geographical confirmation of the Japanese Empire as the devastation of a colony through the protagonist’s catastrophic life marked by the death of his wife and the devastation of Mulori Island. Second, Kim structurally counters the aforementioned ideology by signifying Mulori Island as an ambiguous zone of multiple temporalities and spatialities. In the text itself, Rang’s narration disturbs the Japanese Empire’s geopolitical ideologies around the Pacific War, significantly transforming the devastated island into a terra incognita where the specter of Sunee, Mireuk’s dead wife, resides. “Mulori Island,” therefore, can be understood in terms of the politics of contretemps, denying the imperialistic conception of time-space emblematic of the construed superiority of the present to the past in terms of perfected world history; instead, the text engenders the temporalization of space and the historicization of geography. Given the difficulty in envisaging any alternative form of time-space, decentralizing and multiplying the present time-space might be the only way for a colonial writer to resist the final materialization of imperialistic geopolitical ideology.

Keywords

Saryang Kim, “Mulori Island”, Pacific War, the Japanese Empire, politics of contretemps, terra incognita

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Kritika Kultura
Department of English
School of Humanities
Ateneo de Manila University

The Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) declares Kritika Kultura as a CHED-recognized journal under the Journal Challenge Category of its Journal Incentive Program.

International Board of Editors

Jan Baetens
Professor
Faculty of Arts
Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven (Belgium)

Joel David
Professor of Cultural Studies
Inha University (South Korea)

Michael Denning
Professor of American Studies and English
Department of English
Yale University (US)

Faruk
Faculty of Cultural Sciences
Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia)

Regenia Gagnier
Professor of English
University of Exeter (UK)

Leela Gandhi
John Hawkes Professor of the Humanities and English
Brown University (US)

Inderpal Grewal
Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies
Professor of South Asian Studies, Ethnicity, Race and Migration Studies
Yale University (US)

Peter Horn
Professor Emeritus and Honorary Lifetime Fellow
University of Cape Town (South Africa)
Honorary Professor and Research Associate in German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Anette Horn
Professor of German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

David Lloyd
Distinguished Professor of English
University of California, Riverside (US)

Bienvenido Lumbera
National Artist for Literature
Professor Emeritus
University of the Philippines

Rajeev S. Patke
Director of the Division of Humanities
Professor of Humanities
Yale NUS College (Singapore)

Vicente L. Rafael
Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History
University of Washington (US)

Vaidehi Ramanathan
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Davis (US)

Temario Rivera
Professorial Lecturer
Department of Political Science
University of the Philippines

E. San Juan, Jr.
Philippines Studies Center (US)

Neferti X.M. Tadiar
Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
Barnard College (US)
Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
Columbia University (US)

Antony Tatlow
Honorary Professor of Drama
Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)