[Book Talk] Mibaek

박소정 (2022년 4월). 미백. 서울대학교 아시아연구소 한류연구센터. 서울: 한류연구센터.
Park, S. (2022, April, 27). [Book Talk] Mibaek. Center for Hallyu Studies at Seoul National University Asia Center, Seoul (virtual).

This is the first book talk I had after I published the book Mibaek: Cultural Politics of Skin Color and started work as a Researcher at the Center for Hallyu Studies.

In this talk, I tried to provide a postcolonial perspective on mibaek, or skin-whitening culture of South Korea. While mibaek is the essential aesthetic of Korean media culture and everyday beauty practice, social and academic discourse on it is lacking. Moreover, Eurocentric discourses have interpreted skin-whitening practices of colored people as white envy, mimicry, the negation of self-identity, or a form of pathological aesthetics. Refuting this hegemonic discourse and mobilizing a de-imperialized, posthuman, and affective framework of the Deleuzian philosophy, my book analyzes ‘mibaek assemblage,’ an intricate network of people, technologies, and desires. Investigating mibaek in terms of desire, power, body, and identity, the book reveals the multi-layered cultural politics of mibaek, thus providing an interpretation of mibaek that is not bound by Western-centric representation and exploring the imperialist desire that is newly formed within Korean society.

Kyung Hyun Kim from the UC Irvine and Ji-Hyun Ahn from the University of Washington at Tacoma attended as discussants