From a Theory of Citizen Literature to the Discourses of Overcoming Modernity

Abstract

Paik Nak‐chung's theoretical works on modernity and postmodernity emerged above the horizon in the early 1990s, some years after two great, national and global, political upheavals: in 1987, the Korean people finally succeeded in taking back democracy, at least in the formal and procedural dimension, after more than a quarter of a century of a military regime; and a year after, the so‐called existing socialist states collapsed. The successful democratization, combined with the collapse of the socialist states helped make the values the Korean people have grappled with suddenly look obsolete, so that many Korean scholars moved to the right. In fact, a considerable number of those who ‘turned coats’ were in the progressive camp, thinking that the triumph of capitalism was absolute and it left them with no other option than a postmodern version of Weltanshauung to understand the world as it was unfolding in front of their eyes. Paik Nak‐chung also changed his theories at the face of new‐fangled political situations, arguing that the Korean society had reached a new phase. Instead of following the then prevalent climate of the Korean academia or forsaking the ‘old’ values as obsolete, however, he developed two new theories, the Discourses of Division System, and the Discourses of Overcoming Modernity, one by one, responding to the nature of the new challenges the Korean society faced. As will be argued here, what is fascinating about his theorization is that, although those newly coined discourses show his changed understanding of the world, they are not wholly new, so they should rather be aligned on the framework of his earlier arguments: the content changed, however, with its framework left almost intact. This article, then, aims to chart the way his theorization has been changed by the fresh challenges of the Korean society and the way it has nevertheless kept its essentials, refusing an easy dichotomy between modernity and postmodernity.