Heung Coalition Event | Empire's Afterlives: Legacies of Militarization and Cultural Politics in Korea

Please register for this event here:
https://myumi.ch/qgkxW

In their article, “Transpacific Entanglements,” Yên Lê Espiritu, Lisa Lowe, and Lisa Yoneyama argue that “U. S. neoliberalism mediates itself through the U. S. national security state, which is simultaneously a racial and a settler state; this is expressed not merely in the racialization of the Asian and Pacific Islander peoples but significantly in the erasure of historical and ongoing settler colonialism and, furthermore, in a racial social order that simultaneously pronounces antiblackness and Islamophobia.” In the case of Korea, such processes are evident in the ongoing division of the peninsula, the presence of U. S. military bases, and the praise for South Korea’s ascendency in the global capitalist order - even as this ascent remains contingent upon exploitation in other countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia.

For this event, we bring together E. Tammy Kim and Eunsong Kim to discuss these “transpacific entanglements” with U. S. neoliberalism, militarization, and racism that South Korea’s own position reveals. What are the legacies of militarism in Korea and how do they impact the everyday lives of Koreans within and outside the peninsula? What does South Korea’s position as a sub-empire reveal about the ways in which ongoing legacies of the Cold War affect the narratives around Asia and Asia America? How do such narratives manifest in the cultural politics of South Korea? How can we form transnational spaces to counter the results and norms of U. S. militarism and work towards building solidarity outside the parameters inscribed by U. S. militarism? Please join us on Thursday, March 18, 2021 at 7pm PST for this important and timely conversation between E. Tammy Kim and Eunsong Kim.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Eunsong Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and an affiliate faculty of the department of Cultures, Societies and Global Studies at Northeastern University. Her practice spans: poetry, translation, visual culture and critical race & ethnic studies. Her book project in progress, "The Politics of Collecting: Property & Race & Aesthetic Formations" considers how legal conceptions of racialized property become foundational to avant-garde and modern understandings of innovation in the arts. Her essays have appeared in: "Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association," "Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies," and in the book anthologies, "Poetics of Social Engagement and Reading Modernism with Machines." Her poetry has appeared in the Brooklyn Magazine, The Iowa Review, Minnesota Review, and P-Queue amongst others. Her first book of poetry, "gospel of regicide," was published by Noemi Press in 2017, and her co-translation (with Sung Gi Kim) of Kim Eon Hee’s poetic text "Have You Been Feeling Blue These Days?" was published in 2019. She is the recipient of the Ford Foundation Fellowship, a grant from the Andy Warhol Art Writers Program, and Yale’s Poynter Fellowship.

E. Tammy Kim is a freelance reporter and essayist, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, and a co-host of the podcast Time to Say Goodbye. In 2016, with Yale Professor Michael Veal, she published Punk Ethnography, a book about the politics of contemporary world music. She writes about the Koreas and labor and public goods in the U.S. for The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Yorker, and many other outlets, and previously worked at The New Yorkerand Al Jazeera America. Before pursuing a career in journalism, Ms. Kim was a social justice attorney, and she has been active in the U.S. labor movement. She is currently the 2021 James H. Ottaway Sr. visiting professor of journalism at SUNY New Paltz.

Co-sponsored by the Heung Coalition, the Nam Center for Korean Studies at the University of Michigan and the Center for Korean Studies at UC Berkeley.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at youngkch@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.