The capitalist unconscious : from Korean unification to transnational Korea / Hyun Ok Park.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Park, Hyun Ok, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capitalism--Social aspects--Korea (South).

Capitalism.

Socialism--Korea (North).

Socialism.

Korean reunification question (1945- ).

Korea (South)--Social conditions.

Korea (South).

Korea (North)--Social conditions.

Korea (North).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (377 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The unification of North and South Korea is widely considered an unresolved and volatile matter for the global order, but this book argues capital has already unified Korea in a transnational form. As Hyun Ok Park demonstrates, rather than territorial integration and family union, the capitalist unconscious drives the current unification, imagining the capitalist integration of the Korean peninsula and the Korean diaspora as a new democratic moment. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research in South Korea and China, The Capitalist Unconscious shows how the hegemonic democratic politics of the post-Cold War era (reparation, peace, and human rights) have consigned the rights of migrant laborers-protagonists of transnational Korea-to identity politics, constitutionalism, and cosmopolitanism. Park reveals the riveting capitalist logic of these politics, which underpins legal and policy debates, social activism, and media spectacle. While rethinking the historical trajectory of Cold War industrialism and its subsequent liberal path, this book also probes memories of such key events as the North Korean and Chinese revolutions, which are integral to migrants' reckoning with capitalist allures and communal possibilities. Casting capitalist democracy within an innovative framework of historical repetition, Park elucidates the form and content of the capitalist unconscious at different historical moments and dissolves the modern opposition among socialism, democracy, and dictatorship. The Capitalist Unconscious astutely explores the neoliberal present's past and introduces a compelling approach to the question of history and contemporaneity.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I: Crisis

1. The Capitalist Unconscious: The Korea Question

2. The Aesthetics of Democratic Politics: Labor, Violence, and Repetition

Part II: Reparation

3. Reparation: On Colonial Returnee

4. Socialist Reparation: On Living Labor

5. Chinese Revolution in Repetition: The Minority Question

Part III: Peace and Human Rights

6. Korean Unification as Capitalist Hegemony

7. North Korean Revolution in Repetition: Crisis and Value

8. Spectacle of T'albuk: Freedom and Free Labor

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780231540513

0231540515

OCLC:

972504213