식민주의에 대한 시초적 탐사-차승기, 『식민지/제국의 그라운드 제로, 흥남』, 푸른역사, 2022

Abstract

This article is a review of Cha Seung-ki’s “Ground Zero of Colony/Empire: Heungnam.” The book portrays Heungnam, a heavy industrial city built by the Japanese zaibatsu Noguchi, as a typical place where colonial accumulation takes place, and names it ‘Ground Zero.’ It also refers to the area of latent potential suppressed and concealed under colonial rule as ‘Underground.’ Putting the beginning of colonial history in Heungnam and the repetition of the relationship into view at the same time, colonialism gains a three-dimensional sense of reality. This is how the author presents ‘colonial modernity’ without resorting to theories of colonial plunder or colonial modernization. In this context, the book approaches the colony/empire system not as a problem of domination, but as a problem of goverment. The colony/empire system, analyzed through the lens of governance, possesses complex social characteristics where coercion and persuasion, surrender and resistance, violence and non-violence intersect. This demonstrates that colonial governmentality is based not on the liberal method of ‘making live and letting die’ but on the colonial method of ‘making die and letting die.’ The discovery that life in Chosun, where colonial accumulation takes place, is tantamount to death and that the power to make live is no different from the power to make die, constitutes a significant conclusion drawn by this book. On the other hand, the author pays attention to the fact that various wastes and garbage are produced in the process of utilizing nature to increase productivity. While the process of accumulation proceeds privately, its outcome is communal and social. Nature, workers, and local residents’ bodies become sick due to the chemicals produced during the manufacturing process. Negri and Hardt’s reflections on the ‘Common’ are central to critiquing these contradictions brought about by colonial accumulation. Accordingly, this book concentrates on the problem of how the objective basis of production, the ‘Common,’ was exploited in the colonial/empire system, and also pays attention to the issue of the subjective basis of how the bodies of the post-colonial practiced to escape from or reclaim the ‘Common.’ The concept of ‘Underground’ is of interest in relation to the latter aspect. However, despite the deep socialist connections of the movements and individuals cited as examples in the book, such characterizations are not emphasized. For the author who significantly references Negri and Hardt, socialist antagonistic struggle is not only unimportant but also a method to avoid. However, the figures and literary works the author uses as examples rather show the impossibility of an ‘Underground’ absent of socialism.