Imagining the Other : The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject

Much has been written about Papua New Guinea over the last century and too often in ways that legitimated or served colonial interests through highly pejorative and racist descriptions of Papua New Guineans. Paying special attention to early travel literature, works of fiction, and colonial reports, laws, and legislation, Regis Tove Stella reveals the complex and persistent network of discursive strategies deployed to subjugate the land and its people.

The only full-scale history of Syngman Rhee's (1875-1965) early career in English was published nearly six decades ago. In the book, Young Ick Lew uncovers little-known aspects of Rhee's leadership roles prior to 1948, when he became the Republic of Korea's first president. Lew delves into Rhee's background, investigates his abortive diplomatic missions, and explains how and why he was impeached as the head of the Korean Provisional Government in 1925. He analyzes the numerous personal conflicts between Rhee and other prominent Korean leaders, including some close friends and supporters who eventually denounced him as an autocrat.

Rhee is portrayed as a fallible yet charismatic leader who spent his life fighting in the diplomatic and propaganda arena for the independence of his beleaguered nation - a struggle that would have consumed and defeated lesser men. Based on exhaustive research that incorporates archival records as well as secondary sources in Korean, English, and Japanese, The Making of the First Korean President meticulously lays out the key developments of Rhee's pre-presidential career, including his early schooling in Korea, involvement in the reform movement against the Taehan ("Great Korean") Empire, and his six-year incarceration in Seoul Prison for a coup attempt on Emperor Kojong. Rhee's life in the U.S. is also examined in detail: his education at George Washington, Harvard, and Princeton universities; his evangelical work at the Seoul YMCA; his extensive activities in Hawai‘i and attempts to maintain prestige and power among Koreans in the U.S. Lew concludes that, despite the manifold shortcomings in Rhee’s authoritarian leadership, he was undoubtedly best prepared to assume the presidency of South Korea after the onset of the Cold War in the Korean Peninsula.

Editor's Note Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Representation and Indigenous Subjectivity 2 .Locating the Subject: The Indigenous Construction of Place 3 .Colonizing Location: Representing Colonial Space 4. Colonial Representation and Legal Discourse 5 .The Subject as Child 6. The Subject as Savage 7. The Sexualized Native Body 8. Writing Ourselves: Cultural Self- Representation in Contemporary Papua New Guinean Literature 9. Writing Ourselves II: Representing the Post-Independence Papua New Guinea Landscape Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index