Corporeal Subjectivity, Biopower, and the Abject: Problematising Reproductive Normation in Cho Nam-Joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 and Bora Chung’s “The Embodiment”

From overpopulation to depopulation, the South Korean nation, during its population crisis, has historically mobilised and utilised women’s bodies, sexuality and their ‘vital’ reproductive capacity to achieve and maintain its developmental and modernising ideologies. Banking on the Neo-Confucian cultural heritage of the gendered division of labour, the various state interventions in its anti-natalist to pro-natalist policies controlled women’s bodies to construct a contextually specific reproductive normative. For instance, in Cho Nam-Joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, Oh Misook, Jiyoung’s mother, signifying the family planning generation, is implicitly forced to ‘erase’ her foetus to align with the son-preference normative. In Bora Chung’s “The Embodiment”, young, unmarried Kim Young-lan’s ‘abnormal’ pregnancy emanating from ‘unauthorised’ use of birth control pills can only reach its full embodiment only if it fulfils the heteronormative healthy dictate. Referring to Michel Foucault’s concept of the Biopower, the paper problematises the matrix of discipline and regulation that connects the personal of these characters with the state to define their corporeal gendered subjectivity. Furthermore, the paper will analyse the normation function of the regime of power-knowledge and contextually specific truth discourses to secure control over personal conduct in the form of self-subjection. Lastly, by alluding to Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject, the paper will explore the patriarchal violence experienced by the corporeal subjects when they fail to conform to the ‘healthy family’ framework.

Keywords: Gender, Biopower, Patriarchal Violence, Normativity, Reproductive rights