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Subjectivity and difference: Toward a Korean Christian feminism

Posted on:2002-06-15Degree:Ph.DType:Dissertation
University:The Claremont Graduate UniversityCandidate:Kim, Un HeyFull Text:PDF
GTID:1465390011990164Subject:Literature
Abstract/Summary:
With full recognition of difference among women, many Third world feminist theologians and minority scholars in the United States have challenged the universalizing tendency of middle class, heterosexual white feminist theory and theology in projecting their own experience as representative for all women. This dissertation argues that a postmodern decentered subject and a poststructural discursive subject has challenged feminist theologian to rethink female subjectivity toward a new vision of feminist theology stressing particularity and difference rather than universality and commonality.; In order to find a new form of subjectivity, I mainly deal with three scholars: Rosemary Radford Ruether, Luce Irigaray, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. Taking seriously the challenge of feminist theory of subjectivity and the notion of difference I attempt to criticize the basic assumption of feminist theology by pointing out the "false universality" of Western theological discourses on the female subjectivity.; For constructing a new form of subjectivity toward a Korean Christian feminism, I choose Daoism as my philosophical and cultural foundation where I begin to search for how my subjectivity is formed and changed. A new form of subjectivity based on Daoism for Korean women profoundly broadens and deepens our affirmation of the fullness of subjectivity as Korean Christian women. From the Daoist perceptive, I conclude that we find the forming subjectivity as flux of change informed by Korean Christian women's passion and desire to let different be. The notion of change and difference is the core concepts of forming subjectivity. Therefore, feminist theologians must produce a new discourse that transforms the meaning of women's experience and the notion of woman in order to find new spaces of subjectivity. This discourse should allow for otherness, specificity, difference and transformation.
Keywords/Search Tags:Subjectivity, Korean christian, Feminist, New, Women
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