Korean Americans in the Space of Racial Formation

초록

This paper aims to show how Asian Americans, especially Korean Americans, as a race or ethnic group has been represented in early immigration history. In the postmodern global society,social status of Asian Americans is overdetermined by ideologies of the model minority. To understand these phenomena, research on the racial space or urban ethnic enclaves Korean Americans have created is necessary. In this regard, spatial theory can be a theoretical framework Asian American literary scholars can take. Applying various spatial theories which emphasize spatial interconnection of different spaces the oppressed create to resist authentic rule of the teleological history, in this paper, I will analyze how the early Korean immigration history created the dialectic space of utopia and heterotopia in the Korean enclave within the complex,hegemonic context of nationalism, class, racism, and colonialism. For this project, I will analyze Clay Walls written by Ronyoung Kim. By this research, I will also demonstrate the spatial meaning of race and racism in early Korean immigration societies in the U.S. history. And then, I will argue that this Korean enclave, founded by early Korean immigrants who were the ideologues of nationalism aspiring to build an ethnic utopia, are placed in a contradictory relation to heterotopia for the second generation.

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