Division in Thought: Chen Yingzhen and Park Hyun-Chae

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Publication Date｜2019-06-00

Authors｜Yeon Gwang-Seok

Press｜Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies

ISBN｜9789869086073

Synopsis

Product Description｜

Following on the heels of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies project, Division in Thought: Chen Yingzhen and Park Hyun-Chae is a pioneer work that attempts to explicate in detail the intellectual fissure aggravated by the division system (national partition) and neo-colonial modernization. As such, it assumes South Korea and Taiwan, with their shared historical conditions of colonialism, division system, Cold War and post-Cold War development, to be (inter-)reference point of each other; and, specially, through a cross-examination of Chen Yingzhen (1937-2016) from Taiwan and Park Hyun-Chae (1934-1995) from South Korea, this is also a challenge to and interrogation of the implicit hierarchy as well as historical compartmentalization that is instilled into the present system of knowledge. To be exact, in the pursue of overhauling the intellectual praxis of decolonization-deimperialization that is consistent with a multi-perspective worldview, this work draws on elements of Maoist thought, Takeuchi Yoshimi’s “Asia as Method”, Mizoguchi Yuzo’s “China as Method”, and Chen Kuan-Hsing’s “Deimperialization” to be its essential resources. In other words, this experimental study is only possible because of the network of Inter-Asia scholars committed to the inter-referencing approach and the intellectual-historical resources that is organized and accumulated during the past twenty years. However, this study also reconnoiters the boundary of the inter-Asia methodology, for the latter is motivated in part by the urgent call for methodological transformation in the domain of knowledge-production regarding the political conditions during the post-cold war development in the 1990s.

Author｜

Yeon Gwang-Seok (1977-)
1977, born in a rural area in the midland of South Korea
2004, graduated from the Department of Chinese Language, Hankook University of Foreign Studies (Seoul, Korea)
2004-2007, worked for an international marine logistics company
2007-2009, received a MA degree from the Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies, Shih Shin University (Taipei, Taiwan)
2019-2016, received a PhD degree from the Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University (Hsinchu, Taiwan)
 
He was a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of East Asian Studies, Sungkonghoe University (Seoul, Korea), a visiting scholar at the department of anthropology at Columbia University, and a research professor at the University of North Korean Studies (Seoul, Korea). At present, he is doing post-doctoral research at the International Center for Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.

Table of Contents｜

Foreword: There was a time when people believed in a new world / Chen Hsin-Hsing
Preface in the Korean edition 
Introduction: A shamanic ritual of thought

Erecting the stage: Approaching Inter-regional Referencing
■   History in command and inter-regional referencing 
■   Reflecting on contemporary coloniality: Park Hyun-Chae as a clue

Inviting on stage: Chen Yingzhen (1937-2016) and Park Hyun-Chae (1934-1995)
■   Taiwan as a referent point: Chen Yingzhen
■   Park Hyun-Chae as a historical in-between subject
■   How to historicize the 1980s? 

Showering: “the debate on social characteristics”: the 1980s and the paradox of post-Cold War transformation
■   Why reflecting on the debate on social characteristics in South Korea?
■   May 18 in Gwangju and the paradox of the discourse on people 
■   Rehistoricizing the discourse on people and Park Hyun-Chae’s thesis on people
■   Chen Yingzhen’s South Korean complex and his thesis on social characteristics
■   Park Hyun-Chae’s thesis on social formation and social characteristics
■   Reflecting on the mutual internalization of “poverty” and “ruptures”

Bidding Farewell: Inheriting thoughts under the neo-colonial/division system
■   Colonial modernity and the ownership of knowledge
■   Understanding neo-coloniality and the contradiction of the inheritance of thoughts: the debates between Park Hyun-Chae and Paik Nak-Chung
■   A forgotten legacy: Basic theories on national economy and the neo-colonial/division system
■    “On national economy” and the neo-colonial/division system 

Disassembling the stage: Reopen a space for intellectual emancipation
■   Park Hyun-Chae’s bewilderment: An open possibility 
■   East Asian Decolonialism: Asia as method
■   Summarizing Division in thought: Chen Yingzhen and Park Hyun-Chae

Afterword
Afterwards: How does Yeon Gwang-Seok’s work mean? / Chen Kuan-Hsing
Appendixes
■   The chronicles of Park Hyun-Chae and Chen Yingzhen
■   Bibliography

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