재난을 표상하기, 그리하여 재난을 정치화하기

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the political conflict over disasters in Korean society from a cultural-political perspective. The term “cultural politics” refers to the political work of defining the meaning of events such as disasters through the specific construction of representations such as symbols, narratives, images, and speech, and in doing so, regulating or reconstructing the public's sense of such events. Through Rancière's concepts of policing and politics, this article aims to identify how the political is performed at the level of the sensible. Furthermore, I will analyze the operation of policing in the formation of the public sense of disaster in Korean society through the concept of disaster narrative, focusing on the Sewol ferry disaster. I will then discuss how the Safe Society Movement, which challenges the work of policing in regulating the sense of disaster, has politicized the sense of disaster by constructing alternative representations. Finally, I will clarify the meaning of cultural politics through this interpretive research work.