순수 적대공간의 조건: 라끌라우와 한국의 영속적 위기 상태

Abstract

This article aims to conceptualise characteristics of South Korean politics and society, by elaborating the concept of “pure space of antagonism”. This concept is a result of critical readings and interpretations of Ernesto Laclau’s texts about “empty signifiers” and populism. We define it as an abstract state in which external conditions of antagonism, especially what Laclau called “institution” and “conceptual determination,” are completely removed. South Korean social fields that are close to such a state, reveal an extreme form of social antagonism, the effects of which were not expected by Laclau. He considered antagonistic frontiers as an essential condition for the formation of “the people” who stand against an oppressive, hierarchical or not-well-structured institutional system. However, this article focuses on the destructive effects of the pure space of antagonism, which are made when a non-antagonistic political community disappears or it is not separated from social antagonism. Antagonistic frontiers can constitute the people against elites and, as we can see in South Korea, they can also make an underdog exclude other underdogs or minorities. Therefore, we must establish a space proper to institutionalised politics, which does not depend upon antagonistic and hegemonic space.