100년의 콤플렉스－『반일 종족주의』의 계보학

Abstract

Anti－Japanese Tribalism aims to explain Korea’s modern and contemporary history with keywords such as modern civilization, capitalism, and economic growth. Their strategy is a developmental view of history centered on economic growth. It means the establishment of a smooth success narrative of Korean capitalism. It is a modern civilization consisting of freedom, private power, individuals, and markets that constitute the basic categories in their problem－setting. The key is freedom and the basis is set by private ownership. They argue that market freedom based on private property forms the basis of political and social freedom. In a word, it emphasizes proprietary liberalism. Such a desire for modern civilization based on capitalist development comes from an intense complex about Western modernity. A hundred years ago, Lee Kwang－soo also showed a similar complex and tried to overcome it through enlightenment to the public. The complex about the modern West was not limited to them, but it is also a characteristic of most elite intellectuals in Korea. Lee Young－hoon criticizes the situation in which capitalistic relations are sweeping through economic growth as materialism. It is also said that tribalism is rooted in this materialism. It is freedom to return to criticizing tribalism and materialism. He attributes the spread of free ideology to the world because it is best suited to human nature and the natural order of society. In the end, it boils down to the emphasis on free markets. But there has historically been no market for fair competition. Market logic is close to a kind of ideology, in which the market in reality is kind of a mess, with all kinds of extracurricular factors interventions and extracurricular forces interspersed. Therefore, their logic is closer to the discourse practice of freedom－capitalism that constitutes reality than the language that explains reality.