| Summary: | The Introduction includes my thesis statement, personal context and questions as a birthplace for the thesis, and method for the research. My thesis is that the Ajumma embodies a realistic Korean womanhood which transcends the colonial dichotomy of public and private, masculine and feminine, secular and sacred, political and spiritual, rational and emotional, intellectual and ignorant, sexual and asexual, and moral and immoral. The hybridity and ambiguity of Ajumma is real and irresistible, yet uncontrollable. It threatens and subverts the dominant ideology within. I will unveil the colonial ideology of Korean modern womanhood, white aesthetics, and andocentric patriarchy under the issues around the Ajumma Syndrome in order to refigure Ajumma as a transfigurative postcolonial subject, and to reclaim the subversive power of Ajumma's postcoloniality. The purpose of this dissertation is to establish the foundation for a possible construction of Ajumma theology in the near future through historical, sociological, cultural, and theological analysis on the issues around ajummas. To make my argument clear and concrete, I invoke "Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical arc of pre-figuration, con-figuration, and re-figuration" (5) as my structural framework. Ricoeur's hermeneutics has frequently been used for Biblical exegesis in the New Testament. Yet, I believe that Ricoeur's hermeneutics provides an insightful framework for my project to examine, analyze, and theologize a social/cultural/popular phenomena of Ajumma (text) through an Ajumma's existence, experience, and eyes (reader). According to the explanations of Van Aarder and Dreyer, "[p]refiguration is about reaching the meaning 'behind' the text. [c]onfiguration is to comprehend the meaning 'within' the text. [t]he birth of one's own existential new story as a result of interaction with the text is refiguration". (6). In the first chapter of my disseration, Prefiguration: Behind the Threshold, I explore the meaning behind the Ajumma syndrome. As prefiguration "involves the structural, symbolic, and temporal resources which make possible" (6) the text, I examine the semantic analysis of the Ajumma phenomena, norms of Korean society around the issues of womanhood, motherhood, and beauty, and women's circumstances of history of modernization, industrialization, and democratization. In the second chapter, Configuration: Within the Threshold, I examine and analyze Ajumma within Korean society through socio/cultural/media, political, and religious products and events. I consciously read and explore the socio-cultural-historical sources from Ajumma's daily life, such as K-dramas, films, mass media productions, socio-cultural political events, popular jokes in on-off lines, and folk tales through the point of view of Ajumma identity. In the final chapter, Refiguration: Of (beyond, at) the Threshold, I present my own existential new story of Ajumma by interacting with the text, Ajumma. I construct a Korean postcolonial feminist theology, "Ajumma theology". As my hermeneutical methodology for researching, analyzing, and theologizing, I mainly use perspectives, insights, and theoretical resources from womanist/feminist and postcolonial feminist thoughts. Hence, I see phenomena, read texts, and hear stories intentionally with an Ajumma's existence, experience, and eyes, and to retrieve the hidden herstory of Ajumma not only documented materials but also testimonies, folk tales, photos, films, K-drama, television advertisements, etc. Furthermore, I research, examine, and analyze sources and resources through multi-dimensional and intersectional lenses of race, class, gender, sexual identities, any social cultural political difference, etc. Most of all, the Ajumma's perspective aims to hold family, community, and church together since an Ajumma cares for all (Ajumma's compassion reaches to all).
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