2015~2016년 페미니즘 출판/독서 양상과 의미

Abstract

This essay analyzes social and political contexts surrounding the phenomenon of feminist books becoming bestsellers during 2015~2016. The formation of feminist reading culture, mostly made up of the young female generation in their 20s and 30s, intersects with the movement for eliminating the discrimination against women in Korea. Women who have been discriminated against as hated objects in their daily lives, working places, mass culture, and political society started to identify themselves as feminists while responding to ongoing current feminist issues. The hashtag movement, “#I_am_a_Feminist”, figuratively reveals this change. Identification as the feminist also occurred in the publishing market, where introductory essay books, strongly asserting the importance of “becoming feminists”, became popular. Furthermore, the increasing number of feminist books published by the crowd funding resources such as “tumblbug” shows one aspect of new feminism that has developed in the mass culture and on the Internet. Another feature of the feminist books bestseller phenomenon is that the number of books are inquiring into the problem of “language.” Books published after the incident of “a murder case in Kangnam station” not only showed the practice of remembrance, sympathy and solidarity, but also became a significant medium for preserving female voices that likely to be fade away. Meanwhile, the books provided an activity for people to find practical words from books, which can be used as a weapon to fight against discrimination. This article tried to reconstruct the contexts and its essential elements related to the phenomenon of feminist books’ popularity in 2015-2016. Other topics which are not mentioned in this article, such as the various “Pink spectrum” of feminist books and “changes occurring after reading”, are left for future research and will be discussed later.