Sovereignty of the Dead: Mourning Practices in Jeju as Decolonial Politics against South Korean Subimperialism

Tucker‐Shabazz A., Kim V.H.

AbstractTreasuring the legacy of Ida B Wells‐Barnett as a Black feminist is a vital liberatory commitment, as previous scholarship has commendably demonstrated. Equally important, however, is the need to present Wells‐Barnett as an anticolonial theorist whose scholarly texts—Southern Horrors, A Red Record, and Crusade for Justice—should be incorporated into social theory curricula. This article examines Wells‐Barnett's acute apprehension of the foundational structures of the US empire‐state in her scholarly writings on lynching. As she analysed, the white mob violence epitomised the co‐re‐formation of race and gender, rule of difference, and subversion of offender‐judge relationship. The agency of non‐state actors (e.g., lynch mobs) and government agents (e.g., judge and politicians) co‐constituted the reformation—not total transformation—of these foundational structures. Lynching, therefore, was the lynchpin of the US empire‐state in the post‐Reconstruction period: it sustained the white supremacist order by imposing a mass death penalty on Black people, while simultaneously serving as a disgrace to US civilization. To conclude, we highlight how Wells‐Barnett's theory offers broader relevance to anticolonial/postcolonial sociology, particularly through her subaltern standpoint, attention to the role of non‐state actors, and her commitment to intersectional analysis.

Oh Y.

Kim V.H.

This article is grounded in the racial elevation of a “South” Korean people (not Korean without “South” prefix) implicated in US imperialism and the intersectional implications of this ascent. Contributing a new application of Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness” to the racial capitalism literature, I historically analyze a case in which the elevation of a distinct racial group status entailed (1) the subimperial adherence of the imperially subjected and (2) a postcolonial homoerotic triangle in which racialized men adhered to a hegemonic empire-state and co-constituted a structure of expropriation of racialized-sexualized women. During the 1950s–1960s, the two industries of camptown prostitution and early K-pop girl groups were inextricable. Those industries boomed around US military bases, the war zones where South Korean soldiers proved the “South” Korean race’s corporeal values. Due to its subimperial project of enrollment in US hegemony, the South Korean government actively maintained these industries. South Korean soldiers negotiated their racialized status by partaking in the postcolonial homoerotic triangle with US soldiers, consuming racialized-sexualized Korean women’s bodies. Against this backdrop of the intense sexualization of Korean women’s bodies, a couple of the early K-pop girl groups acquired fame in the mainland US.

Lee H.S.

Throughout history, Korean women have enjoyed a social status and economic role equal to men. The queens of the Silla Kingdom appeared in the seventh century, and equal rights were recognised in ancestral rites and inheritance. However, from the fifteenth century, women’s position was weakened and pushed to the economic, social, and political periphery as patriarchal, patrilineal, and male preference were emphasised under the influence of neo-Confucianism. Yet, even then, an exceptional matriarchal society existed on Korea’s Jeju Island, where women took the lead in social activities including community decision-making and economic initiatives—particularly the diving women, known as haenyeo. Can Korean Muslim women today also begin to create a more female-led society in the male-centred atmosphere usually found in Muslim contexts? I argue that this is possible, through both the woman-centred traditions of Jeju and the case study of female Korean Muslim converts living on the island.

Kim N.H.

Abstract This article revisits South Korea's mostly forgotten involvement in the Vietnam War and examines lingering effects of the war on South Korea's subimperial nation-building in general and on its contemporary multicultural policies in particular. The Vietnam War served as a stepping stone for South Korea to transform itself from a war-torn country to an economic subempire in Asia. Encounters with Vietnamese refugees in the aftermath of the war helped form South Korea's subimperial gaze, solidifying the racial inferiority of South Koreans to the United States but establishing their superiority over the Vietnamese. Further, the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees laid the foundation for the practices of contemporary South Korean multiculturalism. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, South Korea presented itself as a benevolent protector of Vietnamese refugees. The brutal acts committed on the battlefields and the neglect of the Vietnamese refugees living at the margins of South Korean society have been effaced from public memory. Through the work of selective memory, the “multicultural” South Korea presents itself yet again as a caring supporter of Vietnamese migrant wives. It is through this cultural amnesia that the myth of ethnic homogeneity was maintained, allowing the contemporary multiculturalism discourse and practice to be advertised as a novel cultural globalization project that is free of historical guilt or responsibility.

Brundage J.S.

Kim V.H.

Tinsley M.

Hong C.

Jung M.

Agamben G.

Hammer R.

This article rethinks sociological approaches to difference and inclusion. It argues that civil sphere theory replicates colonial dynamics through abstracting civil codes from their role in colonial governance. Through a case study of French colonial Algeria, the article illuminates the historical co-constitution of the French Republic and the colonial subject. This imperial history explains how civil codes came about through the same social process as the domination of the colonial other. Given these entangled histories, building solidarity requires we move beyond a process of civil repair that rests on incorporation to one of civil construction, which takes account of historical wrongs and the colonial layer of meaning embedded in categories of civil discourse. Theorizing from suppressed histories allows us to question the content of the civil sphere’s classificatory system and turn our attention to a resignification of the core group in the wake of colonial histories.

Kwon H.

Mbembe A.

Reed I.A.