Feminist Translational Readings of "Korean Women"

Abstract: This essay explores the significance of translation for producing knowledge about women across different geographies, cultures, and political and economic systems. It proposes a critical interdisciplinary praxis of feminist translational reading, which contends seriously with the problematic of linguistic translation through a commitment to reading across multiple archives and disciplines. It begins by retracing the citational relay of Korean women's decolonial provocations via the 1977 Frontiers publication of an essay written by Japanese feminist journalist Yayori Matsui. It then moves to a feminist translational reading of a 2021 Korean-language publication featuring twelve life stories of women from the Korean diaspora, which demonstrate their multilingual and multivocal heterogeneity. In contrast to their generic and anonymous invocation in 1977, this transnational and translingual relay foregrounds three specific nodes of difference and inequality among Korean women: (1) dispersed genealogies, (2) diverse configurations of social reproduction, and (3) intra-ethnic exploitation.