어떤 영혼들 - 산업노동자의 "심리" 혹은 그 너머

Abstract

This paper explores the historical and political meaning of Korean laborer's self-writings from the 1960s and 1970s. During this period, industrialization was the main axis in the running of the state. The process whereby industrialization was justified and realized led to the construction of a regime of knowledge and cognition regarding laborers. It is notable that the ideology of "management" emerged as an important agenda in the 1960s. Management understands groups of workers at the level of enterprises' of industrieds' actual workplaces, whereas government regards workers as a "population," a large entity characterized by collectivity, and regularity. Along with management, the field of industrial psychology grew to become very important. Industrial psychology tried to adopt a microscopic approach to analyzing the working class. In the frame of industrial psychology, workers were to be tested, disciplined, and regulated for improvement of productivity and efficiency. However, laborers' self-writings reconstructed the idea of the working class in a totally different way. The writings of Chun Taeil, Suck Jeongna, and Yoo Dongwoo showed the misery and power of the working class at the same time and overturned the state's conception of workers. The idea of the working class constructed by laborers themselves through their own discursive practice could be termed the "soul," in line with the concept of Franco Berardi.