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SOAS evening seminar: Is digital feminism as public feminism in South Korea?

Part of the Autumn 2018 season of seminars at SOAS:

Is digital feminism as public feminism in South Korea?

Dr JongMi Kim (Coventry University)
Friday 30 November 2018, 5:15 – 7:00pm
Brunei Gallery Room B211
If you would like to attend the event please register. Online registration

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Abstract

In this paper, I explore how the current feminist movement (Hyewha shiwi) on the issue of “upskirt” (spy cam) in South Korea has become a young feminist discourse, which can be called digital feminism. The paper is focused on how technology of self that invites girls and women to raise the feminist issue against the “spycam” problem and organise a feminist movement through on/offline. The discussion demonstrates the extensiveness of debates across digitalised/public feminism, old/ young feminism, and feminism/ antifeminism is to examine continuities between the current new wave of digital feminist movements and the postfeminist sensibility in South Korea. The analysis focuses on how new forms of media enabled young generation of girls and women to form new feminism (or antifeminism): popular discussions about gender, gazing culture, playing culture and consumer body culture. Examining the incitements to digitalize feminism in the neoliberal context, the paper examines how an emergent technology of confidence re-signifies feminist accounts by situating feminist visibility and misogynist responses to feminism systematically. The paper diagnoses the current speculation of digital feminism in relation to wider debates about feminism, public feminism as digitalised culture and how this opens up new possibilities and associated new challenges.

Speaker Biography

Dr JongMi Kim is a senior lecturer at Media and Communication, the faculty of Arts and Humanities, Coventry University. She received her PhD at the Gender Studies Institute at LSE. Her main interests are feminist culture and media studies in the postcolonial context. Her first book is about New femininities in South Korea (Routledge). The current research is  exploring theoretical relationships between new materialist feminism and digital bodies.

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