Uchang Kim

Global Literary Leaders: Keynote Speakers

Abstract

Carlos Castaneda’s prose work, Teachings of Don Juan: Yaqui Way of Knowledge, is a full-time prose work that stands by itself, a story describing a certain kind of experience. It originated, however, as a report on an experience of fieldwork, by the author, who was working on a doctoral dissertation in anthropology required by UCLA. Fieldwork was necessary as a kind of proof that the dissertation is based on real-world experience. But what was a testimony for the connection between the real world and the dissertation? It was published in 1985 and soon became popular among the general readership. It is often attributed to the fact that academic learning lost its prestige. But even among the general public, what has direct appeal is rather what is rendered in stories, that ism in literature, narratives, and poetry. The work allows the reader to feel the sense of personal in literature, conveying the real sense of the real world. Human agency is there, hiding or manipulating poems and stories. What is more real than our contact with the real world but seeing river or swimming in it?–no statistic of factual depiction of swimming in it–what could be more real than this physical contact? It is so natural that people would like to go on travel. It is natural that our age has become an age of tourism. Life truth is directly felt in our physical contact, but we would subsidize it with abstract description.

Bio

Kim Uchang is a prominent South Korean literary critic and scholar of English literature, renowned for his theory of “aesthetic rationality” and his efforts to transcend ideological dichotomies such as conservatism and liberalism, or nationalism and globalism. Educated at Seoul National University and Harvard University, Kim has taught at leading Korean institutions including Seoul National University, Korea University, and Ewha Womans University. His literary criticism explores the dialectical relationship between the individual and society, emphasizing literature’s role in restoring humanity in the modern capitalist era. A founding member of Literatures of the World and a member of the National Academy of Arts, Kim has received numerous accolades for his contributions to literary theory and criticism, including the Inchon Award and the Green Stripes Order of Service Merit.