Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema

Jinsoo An claims in his book Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema that “the visualization of colonial space as the contentious site of both domination and incessant challenges to that domination informs the most enduring postcolonial imaginary of colonialism onscreen” (8). Captured in his brief analysis of the visual facade in Im Kwon-taek’s 1978 film The Genealogy is a critique of the ways in which postcolonial cinema instilled certain visual and aesthetic repertoire and tropes, allowing for a “curtailed view and willful disavowal” of the colonial past that haunts the present (132). In the nationalist historiography, An argues, “The colonial period signifies a unique conceptual conundrum, for it marks a fundamental rupture in the assumed ‘continuity’ of the nation’s linear and teleological trajectory of progress” (109). Here the author borrows from Michel de Certeau’s theory of everyday cultural practices to discuss both the colonial space as it...