This article examines the principle of commercialization evoked in Zhang Ailing's writing and explores how it frames the subjective value of emotions—particularly desolation—in her fiction. Human relationship in Zhang's world is essentially commercial, in the sense that it is dominated by interest calculation and exchange. This relationship is driven by desires that are relentless and cannot find meaning in any goal. Behind this human relationship is a commercial framework of value that turns any form of subjectivity assuming natural value into a commodity for consumption. This is the mechanism through which desolation in Zhang's fiction is commercialized. By exploring the affective structure of desolation, the author argues desolation assumes natural value by building fatalism into its structure as a natural principle. In doing so, Zhang's aesthetics of desolation presents itself as a petty bourgeois construction for consumption.

Since its publication, Yi Yŏngil's Complete history of Korean cinema (1969) has remained a seminal work of film historiography. A critical rereading of the work is required, however, to capture the paradoxes of postcolonial historiography that are created by the spatial-temporal orders of modernity in a decolonizing, non-Western society. By examining Yi's creative use of historical documentation, such as oral testimonies of filmmakers, this article considers how he offers a counter-narrative against colonialist historiography that denies Korea's agency to transform itself into a modern nation-state without Japanese annexation. However, despite his decolonizing endeavor, his work cannot fully eradicate the colonial effects that inevitably shape postcolonial subjectivity in the globalizing world. In reassessing the possibilities and predicaments of his work, this article reveals Yi's fundamental conundrum as a postcolonial writer living with the effects of colonialism, ultimately challenging the imagination of the postcolonial experience as an uninterrupted struggle to establish an autonomous nation.

This article has two main goals for its examination of wartime diaries: (1) to argue against the idea that a diary's reliability is directly related to the degree of privacy that its author enjoyed, and (2) to suggest an alternate use for these texts by scholars—namely, the construction of the author's concept of self through acts of “self-discipline.” The article briefly outlines military diary writing and reportage in modern Japan, showing how “fact” and “truth” came to be understood in diaries. Through an examination of published and manuscript diaries, the article addresses theoretical premises such as “intended audience,” “private language,” and the nature of “privacy” itself. Finally, the article provides an alternative reading of diaries: The texts represent the author's attempt to construct a compelling and coherent subject position. Because diarists are involved in the construction of their identities, the article suggests that scholars use diaries to move beyond examinations of subjectivity solely reliant on disciplinary institutions.