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.Yet even then, rival currents were to be found in the resistanceoffered in the name of Confucian universalism -- not of Oriental exceptionalism, which is adifferent matter -- and in the insufficiently articulated but impressively mobilized popular strugglefor an alternative modernity represented by the Tonghak Peasants' War of 1894.Under Japanesecolonial rule ( 1910-45) the discourse of modern nationhood and of regaining national sovereigntycomes to predominate, whether the emphasis falls on bourgeois or proletarian patriotism.But hereagain, it is a gross simplification to find in this anticolonial nationalism a mere duplicate orvariant of certain models provided by Western precursors, for, as Partha Chatterjee has argued,"The most powerful as well as the most creative results of the nationalist imagination in Asia andAfrica are posited not on an identity but rather on a difference with the 'modular' forms of thenational society propagated by the modern West." 8True, the gaining of formal independence usually results in a national state that turns into a mostunquestioning participant in the interstate system, and in the virtual dissipation of the anticolonialpotential for difference.But in Korea, the liberation from Japanese rule was quickly followed bythe division of the country along the 38th parallel and then, after the devastating war of 1950-53,by a slightly revised Armistice Line, producing two state structures of patently contrastingideologies and institutions but also interlocked, as I believe and have argued, within a single"division system" that, in its turn, constitutes a subsystem of the larger world-system.Thedistinctive mark of the national literature movement of our generation, therefore, has been its-226- file:///C|/Archivos%20de%20programa/eMule/Incoming/Stanley%20Fis.Jameson%20(Ed)%201998%20The%20Cultures%20Of%20Globalization.htmlpreoccupation with this particular "national question" 9 : the national division that is certainly alegacy of colonial rule and even more a direct product of neocolonial intervention, yet that hastaken on a systemic nature of its own with self-reproducing antidemocratic structures on bothsides of the dividing line.A national literature that seeks to engage with this specific national predicament could hardly benationalistic in any obvious sense.In fact, the situation entails an inevitable deconstruction of anysimplistic conception of "the nation" -- or "class," for that matter, although class analysis itselfbecomes indispensable if one is to make sense of that mechanism of self-reproduction.The"nation" in this instance happens to be a nation divided into two "societies" and belonging to twodifferent states, hence possibly on the way to becoming two nations."Class" also becomesproblematic because the very term Korean working class, for example, would hardly make sense:South or North would first have to be specified and, if reunification of some kind is the practicalaim, one must also take into account the relation of that particular class (or segment of a class)with its counterpart on the other half of the peninsula, as well as with various other social classesand strata within its own half.Add to this the fact that the division system is but a sub system ofthe capitalist world-system, whose sexist and racist, as well as capitalist, nature I can only note inpassing; then due attention to the workings of the latter and the consequent forging oftransnational alliances to fight its global ravages become an integral part of the "national" agenda.In South Korea, too, the quickening pace of globalization since the geopolitical changes of 1989,and all the more so with the launching of the World Trade Organization regime, has worked toamplify those voices dismissing national literature as an outmoded idea.But in one aspect, atleast, the same globalization has worked both to foreground and strengthen the latter's centralagenda: the recent U.S.-North Korea settlement in Geneva will finally bring the end of the coldwar to the Korean peninsula, too, and remove a major prop, though no more than one, for itsdivision system.We must thus see in the current globalization both a threat and an opportunity:threat, whether in the name of "international competitiveness" or "global culture," to what limitedautonomy and democracy we may now enjoy, but an opening for the needed effort to work across,as well as within, national and quasinational (i.e., intra-Korean) borders for a more democraticand egalitarian-227- file:///C|/Archivos%20de%20programa/eMule/Incoming/Stanley%20Fis.Jameson%20(Ed)%201998%20The%20Cultures%20Of%20Globalization.htmlworld.If a genuine overcoming of the division system does come to pass -that is, a reunificationwith meaningful popular input, leading to an innovative state structure responsive to the realneeds of the population in the globalizing age rather than to any preconceived notion of the nation-state -then it will represent a crucial reordering of the world-system itself, perhaps even a decisivestep in its transformation into a better system.I am not saying that actual literary productions of today's Korea have quite risen to this challenge.A different way of putting it would be to admit that other and worse futures for the divisionsystem retain their probabilities: either an indefinite prolongation of the division, though in asomewhat ameliorated state, leaving the Korean people a victim both to its pair of undemocraticstates and to manipulative and exploitative foreign powers; or a unilateral annexation on SouthKorean capitalist terms, resulting in the emergence of virulent Korean nationalism (greatlystrengthening its sexism as well) or the disastrous collapse of the Korean economy, or both.Eitherprospect is too dismal for any self-respecting people not to seek a genuine alternative --particularly for those working in the field of literature.At this point, it is worth recalling that not only national literatures but also world literature findthemselves threatened by the global age; that today, global capital and its cosmopolitan culturalmarket, rather than "national one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness," represent the chief danger.Ibelieve the same goes for the sphere of political action.Various ethnic, national, and racialprejudices do present a threat to a peaceful and democratic world, but in the final analysis, theywork in accordance with, and within the limits of, a global system of accumulation and attendantexploitation
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Tematy
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