A Study on the Narrative Networks of Queer Joy and the Politics of Queer Feelings —Focused on Aspects of Korean Contemporary Novels

Jeong Mi-Seon 

Politics of queer feelings goes beyond queer politics of sexuality practices to ask what a good/livable life is. It seeks to name the ways of being and feeling lived by queer bodies, trace their meanings, and explore the possibilities of alternative ways of living. In focusing on the politics of queer feeling in Korean contemporary novels, this study analyses the aspects and narrative networks of queer joy that are prominent in the cases of Kim Ji-yeon, Kim Byung-woon, Lee Seon-jin, and Kim Mel-la. In these novels, queer joy appears to encompass a binary spectrum of negativity and positivity that constructs an archive of queer feelings, and is accompanied by moments of transgression and negotiation that question the normativity of relational life and redefine the feelings of life through narratives of joy constructed in the lives of queer people. As a result, queer joy in Korean contemporary novels resists privileged life scripts through reflective joy in the construction of normativity that encompasses intimacy, temporality, and affective systems, and proposes the value of queer joy as a generative agent and resource of alternative good/livable lives that embodies political capacities.

Queer Joy, Normativity, Queer People, Good/Livable Life, Politics of Queer Feelings

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