Intersectional Incoherence: Zainichi Literature and the Ethics of Illegibility

Modern East Asian Literature Research Cluster presents

Emerging Research on Modern East Asian Literature

Intersectional Incoherence: Zainichi Literature and the Ethics of Illegibility

Speaker: Cindi Textor

Associate Professor | Department of World Languages and Cultures | University of Utah

Moderator: Edwin Michielsen

Assistant Professor | Department of Japanese Studies | The University of Hong Kong

DATE: 11 APR 2025 (FRI) 10:00–11:30 am (HKT)

VENUE: ON ZOOM

REGISTRATION: https://bit.ly/MEAL11APR2025

This talk will present an overview of “Intersectional Incoherence: Zainichi Literature and the Ethics of Illegibility,” which stages an encounter between the critical discourse on intersectionality and texts by Korean subjects of the Japanese empire and their postwar descendants in Japan. Arguing for intersectionality as a reading method rather than strictly a tool of social analysis, I explore the productive potential of incoherence in literature by Koreans in Japan, particularly at a moment when anxieties about the “end” of Zainichi literature are on the rise. Engaging with the incoherence of both the genre and the text, I argue, allows for a more ethical approach to the literary production of communities that resist representation within existing paradigms, such as Koreans in Japan.

Cindi Textor is Associate Professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at University of Utah. Her work on incoherence, illegibility, and intersectionality in Korean- and Japanese-language fiction has appeared in “positions: asia critique,” “Journal of Korean Studies,” and other venues. Her monograph, “Intersectional Incoherence: Zainichi Literature and the Ethics of Illegibility,” was published by University of California Press in 2024. She is also the translator of Kim Sŏkpŏm’s “The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost” (Columbia University Press, 2010) and Lee Yangji’s “Yuhi” (in “Nabi Taryŏng and Other Stories,” Seoul Selection, 2022).

The series is coordinated by Prof. Su Yun Kim (suyunkim@hku.hk), Prof. Pei-yin Lin (pylin@hku.hk), and Prof. Alvin Wong (akhwong@hku.hk), and is supported by the School of Chinese, School of Humanities, and School of Modern Languages and Cultures.

For registration of the seminar, go to https://bit.ly/MEAL11APR2025.