In Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910), the cultural and political significance of grievance (wŏn) experienced by wronged persons entitled them to seek legal justice through the petition system. The Emotions of Justice uses the petitions archive to unravel the mechanism of state-society interaction within the framework of moral suasion, in which the legitimacy of the state depended on attending to people’s welfare, which entitled even the most abject social subjects, such as female slaves, to legal participation. Tracing the history and structure of the petition system, this book unravels the narrative grammar of individual petitions, where the petitioner’s identity was articulated at the intersection of gender, status, kinship connections, and narrative idiom. While the book focuses on women’s petitions, it looks into the overarching gender structure, which was instrumental in allowing women legal participation and providing them with the occasion to constitute their own legal voice.
JaHyun Kim Haboush has...
