Resurrecting Virtues against Evil: A Study of the Cultivation and Exercise of Virtues of the Oppressed 公开
Shin, Wonchul (Summer 2019)
Abstract
My dissertation aims to diversify the conventional Christian virtue discourses that in general set Jesus as the exemplary model for Christian virtues and exclusively focus on imitating the self-sacrifice of Jesus in the passion narrative. By employing a case study of a particular community, this dissertation exposes the danger of the self-sacrificial virtue discourses to the oppressed who have been structurally and culturally forced to sacrifice themselves excessively.
To adequately register the lived experience of the oppressed, this dissertation uncovers untold stories of South Korean mothers and wives of political victims oppressed by the totalitarian regimes of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan in the 1970 and ’80s. Based on my fieldwork in South Korea, I collected archival and qualitative data on their distinctive form of political resistance and democratic movement, what they call kajok-woondong, roughly translated as family movement.
Using the collected data, first, this dissertation offers thick historical descriptions of the sociopolitical context of South Korea in the 1970 and ’80s and exposes a life-negating and dehumanizing culture, specifically totalitarian ideology, which was disseminated by the regimes to normalize individual citizens’ excessive or total sacrifices for the glory of nation. Then, this dissertation resents a thick description of moral life of the mothers and wives, tracing the historical development of their family movements and exploring their radical resignification of the traditional values of motherhood and wifehood in Korean culture.
In the second part, this dissertation offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the transformative process of cultivating the moral agency of the mothers and wives by examining the process of emotional transformation and the role of transmuted emotions in providing them with moral resources. By exploring their non-violent and life-affirming protest in contrast to life-consuming suicide protest, this project argues that the mothers and wives embodied an alternative moral virtue—the virtue of salim—to the propagandized virtue of the total sacrifice. Finally, given their creative use of religious symbols related to the resurrection of Christ in their public protest, the dissertation re-reads the Matthean resurrection narrative through the stories of the mothers and wives and then suggest the faithful witness to God’s resurrecting power, exemplified by the women in the Gospel of Matthew, as an alternative theological virtue of the oppressed.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
I. Main Moral Questions
1
II. Methodology
5
III. Outline
10
PART ONE
CHAPTER 2: HEESAENG (SACRIFCE)
I. Introduction
16
II. The Sociopolitical Context of South Korea in the 1960s to 1980s
: The Totalitarian Regimes of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan
20
II.1. Mass Mobilization for Rapid Economic Development
23
II.2. Positive and Negative Propagandization of Totalitarian Ideology
28
III. Totalitarian Ideology as Cultural Violence
38
III.1. Structural and Cultural Violence against Industrial Workers
40
III.2. Structural and Cultural Violence against Mothers and Housewives
45
III.3. State and Cultural Violence against Citizens
51
IV. Conclusion
59
CHAPTER 3: KAJOK (FAMILY)
I. Introduction
61
II. Historical Narratives of Family Movements in the 1970s
: Focus on Kukahyup and Yangkahyup
63
III. Historical Narratives of Family Movements in the 1980s
: Focus on Minkahyup and Yukahyup
89
IV. Conclusion
113
PART TWO
CHAPTER 4: KIDO (PRAYER)
I. Introduction
117
II. Transforming Individual Sorrow into Communal Lament
120
III. Transforming Shame and Guilt into Anger and Pride
128
IV. Transforming Han into Joy and Hope
137
V. Conclusion
143
CHAPTER 5: SALIM (LIFE-GIVING)
I. Introduction
145
II. Tragic Internalization of the Culture of Jukim
: Living Sacrifices on the Altar of Democracy
147
III. The Embodied Virtue of Salim: Moral Virtue of the Mothers and Wives
153
III.1. Habituation of Salim
157
III.2. Virtuous Creativity
163
III.3. Burden-Sharing Practical Wisdom
171
III.4. Holistic Flourishing
178
CHAPTER 6: BUHWAL (RESURRECTION)
I. Introduction
183
II. The Mothers’ and Wives’ Faithful Public Witness to the Power of Salim
184
III. Biblical Women’s Witness to the Resurrecting Power of God
195
IV. Toward a Resurrecting Discourse of Theological Virtues
207
APPENDIX
Appendix A: Plan for Interviews
211
Appendix B: Minkahyup’s Emblem
213
BIBLIOGRAPHY
214
About this Dissertation
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