Abstract
The doctor in a foreign country is a recurring theme in physician writer Richard Selzer’s stories. In his 2009 novel, Knife Song Korea, Selzer returns to this theme, examining it in depth through the lens of gender. Selzer features the American military surgeon Sloane’s multiple border-crossings, namely, from America to Korea, from health to patienthood, and from sex-exploitation to love. Crossing those visible or invisible borders in the gender and race conscious contexts of medical profession and military in wartime Korea, Sloane finds himself liminally located among various masculine stereotypes. The mixed-race situation in the novel further pushes Sloane to realize the unbearability of the baggage of American manhood as represented in his profession. Selzer’s punishment of Sloane’s border-crossings seems to suggest that physicians, together with patients, are equally likely to be victimized by the macho norms in medicine.
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Notes
For example, Selzer’s short story “Imposter” deals in depth with physician’s feeling of inadequacy in a dramatized way.
Butler stresses in her writing, most notably Bodies That Matter, that “gender performativity cannot be theorized apart from the forcible and reiterative practice of regulatory sexual regimes” (15). Butler’s theory on gender performativity was first adopted by Poirier in her study of medical student’s materialization and embodiment of regulatory norms in the profession.
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Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Prof. Gayle Whittier for her generosity of time and comments in the process of writing this paper. I am deeply grateful for her helpful assistance.
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Sun, J. Liminal Masculinity in Richard Selzer’s Knife Song Korea . J Med Humanit 35, 85–93 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-011-9168-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-011-9168-y