Lecture on 12th June: The Rise of New Right and Triumphalist Discourse
4. Juni 2018, von AAI Webmaster
On 12th June 2018, 18:00, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Namhee Lee from the University of California (Los Angeles) will give a lecture on "The Rise of New Right and Triumphalist Discourse".
The culture war in South Korea in the last two decades or so turned into a “civil war of history” among intellectuals, with the rise of the New Right and its attempt to rewrite Korean history. South Korea’s New Right consists mostly of intellectuals and those who are in positions of leadership in society. Many were also formerly involved in the 1980s minjung movement and were followers of North Korea’s state ideology (chuch’e sasang). I explore how the rise of the New Right and its triumphalist discourse constitute the regime of discontinuity, a “neoliberal structure of disavowals” of the minjung project. The discourse of the New Right also recast, through the circuitous critique of nationalism, the centrality of the state, by way of bringing the primacy of market and neoliberal governance not only to the economy, but also to every aspect of public and private life. The New Right discourse obscures the mutual constitution of South Korea and its nemesis, the North, and turns the North’s economic problems and its status as a pariah in the global community into cultural difference, which then justifies its soon-to-be-anticipated demise.
The lecture takes place at Asia Africa Institute, room 232.