Park, S. (2021, August 25). Decolonizing skin color: mibaek assemblage in the postcolonial era. Presented at ICAS(International Convention of Asia Scholars) 12, Kyoto (virtual).
I attended ICAS 12 to pitch my Ph.D. dissertation. This presentation, which is a summary of my dissertation, aims to conceptualize ‘mibaek assemblage’ and show how it produces an ambivalent power of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the postcolonial Korean society.
Abstract
This study aims to provide a decolonial interpretation on mibaek(美白), or skin-whitening culture of South Korea, through the concept of ‘mibaek assemblage’ which is an intricate network of people, technologies, desires, and affects. While Eurocentric discourses have interpreted skin-whitening practices of colored people as white envy, mimicry, or a form of pathological aesthetics, mibaek calls for a postcolonial perspective that contextualizes it in Korean and Asian culture.
How is mibaek assemblage organized? Based on the findings from literature reviews, media representations, in-depth interviews, and field research, this study suggests three aspects of mibaek assemblage. First, ‘mibaek image assemblage’ is constituted of simulacra of mibaek which ubiquitously exist in Korean media and cityscape, constructing the ideal of skin. Second, ‘somatechnical mibaek assemblage’ reveals how human bodies and technologies interconnect, thereby forming ‘mibaek interface’. Third, ‘trans-Asian mibaek assemblage’ places mibaek within a trans-Asian cultural flow and shows that mibaek is coded with regional aesthetics and sensitivity.
What does mibaek assemblage do? Mibaek assemblage produces deterritorializing power. It produces meanings and values that resist existing structural hierarchies and dissolve the boundaries between the feminine and the masculine, white and Asian. On the other hand, mibaek assemblage simultaneously produces a reterritorializing power. The burgeoning K-beauty and K-culture industries package mibaek as a transnational commodity that reveals pigmentocratic imperiality.
Based on this ambivalent power of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, this study suggests ideal concepts of decolonial mibaek counter-politics encompassing ‘mibaek simulacra’ and ‘mibaek machine’, which constructs decolonial subjectivity rejecting colorism and orientalism.
SOJEONG PARK 