This lecture tries to grasp the problem of the modern nation-state’s construction Asia after World War II, focusing especially on the Gwangju people’s uprising in 1980, South Korea. From the conflict of various agencies in the event, I’d like to contextualize these struggles to form the people’s power, not the bourgeoisie’s power, within the universal historical experience of Asia. The lecture includes tracing the historical roots of ongoing social movements in Asia, and considering their future prospects.

I will explain this through the course of commune formation in Asia. “Commune” is a concept from world history. Since the Gwangju uprising, the true agents of Korean reform movements and their efforts to build political frames for their social liberation have continued in Korean society. Also, understanding of the Third World and of the extensive solidarity movements is active around academia and cultural movements today. In Korean society, various disputes and practices relating to the “commune” are now being developed again. As expected, commune-ism is conspicuous in the fields of cultural movement and cultural studies. Discourses such as ‘Commune-ist Manifesto’, the ideas of “cultural society” and “social state” come pouring out. Practices such as knowledge communities, association movements and community building are actively proceeding. Diverse trends for restoring society against the state are forming as well in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. But the features of these movements are different from the flow of class-based political movement that followed the Gwangju uprising. Some scholars clarify that this shift is characterized by an “affective turn”. Active movements for new affiliations among cultural producers desiring ‘a free and equal coalition’ are already going beyond borders, and they function as any power does that newly constitutes Asia. Then how could cultural studies, which has already achieved a linguistic turn, take this affective turn as an object of academic research? What kind of critical mind could we have about the Gwangju Uprising at this time of affective turn in cultural studies?

Texts to Read: 
‘The May 18 Democratic Uprising in Gwangju’, The May 18 Memorial Foundation.
Wondam Paik (2016) The 60th anniversary of the Bandung Conference and Asia, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 17:1, 148-157.