ghosts

SMB08 Ghosts, Spies, and Grandmothers (2014) proposed ghosts and specters as metaphors for past ideologies, Asian religious cultures, recurring memories of pain, or entities omitted from official historical narratives. In the monograph Modernities against Modernity that accompanied SMB08, an essay titled “Ghosts, Female Ghosts, and Being Possessed”(2014) by Taiwanese feminist artist Li Ang questions what this term signifies in the context of “cultures with ghosts.” In Asia, ghosts are generally considered to represent innocent victims of violence or people who end their own lives – especially vulnerable individuals who are unable to protect themselves. Elsewhere in the SMB08 monograph, Korean anthropologist Heonik Kwon references the work of 15th-century Joseon scholar Kim Si-seup, explaining that the living and the dead reflect each other’s circumstances through a relationship of mutual compassion, thereby forming an intimate bond as alienated or exiled beings.