“Camel’s Eye” and “Sexual Violence Among Men in the Military in South Korea.”
Discuss the relationship between militarized masculinity and sexual violence perpetrated by men against women and men, as represented by the short story, “Camel’s Eye” and the article by Insook Kwon, et.al., “Sexual Violence Among Men in the Military in South Korea.”
Consider the following issues: 1) Why do the soldiers want to buy camel’s eye, a sexual prosthetic? How is it related to their militarized masculinity?; 2) How is prostitution related to militarized masculinity in “Camel’s Eye”?; 3) How is militarized masculinity related to masculinist nationalism? How does the story critique both of these concepts?: 4) According to Kwon’s article, how does sexual violence among men contribute to the military’s ideological and institutional disciplinary purposes? ; 5) In the South Korean military, how is militarized masculinity related to the same-sex male sexual violence?; 6) Given all of the issues above, how might we deconstruct the conventional masculinity that is closely associated with militarized masculinity and reconceptualize masculinity alternatively? What possibilities do these two texts suggest to us?
2. About 375 words (1 ½ page): Mother and A Tale of Two Sisters, Linda Williams, Barbara Creed
Compare the figure of 3 mothers in Mother and A Tale of Two Sisters: Dojun’s mother in Mother, the stepmother and the dead mother in A Tale of Two Sisters. In your analysis of these 3 mother characters, please first define the following concepts from Linda Williams’s and Barbara Creed’s articles, abject mother, archaic mother, castrated mother/trauma of castration, and see if they apply to the characters.
