Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
(Kyung Hee University, South Korea)
Abstract:
My presentation will recount the process of colonialisation from the perspective of cosmotechnics by rethinking technology. Technology always contains interality from within and serves as mediation between scientific knowledge and nature. The inbetweeness of technology rethinks the meaning of modernity. In this vein, the paper will argue that technology is still already political in the process of modernization. In the first Korean modern novel Heartless, which was entirely influenced by Japanese modern literature, protagonist Yi Hyongsik encourages his friends to study abroad and come back to build up the nation with their scientific knowledge. Exclaiming “Science! Science!,” He urges three fellow travellers to return to “give the Korean people science.” The climatic scene of the novel, written by Yi Kwangsu, sets forth the way in which the intellectuals in colonial Korea regarded science as the fundamental element of the strong nation. For them, then, to strengthen the country comes along with modernization and science is the very foundation of modernity. The primal milieu of the Korean modern literature betrays the relation between scientific knowledge and colonialism, even though the novel does not clarify what science means by its narrative. The term science here symbolizes the power of Western civilization and the knowledge must be brought to the nascent nation for an independent country. Without science, from this perspective, there is no possibility of national independence. Yi Kwangsu seemed to convince that scientific knowledge is necessary for bringing forth the strong nation-state. For him, the strength of one country depends on mature culture as well as economic development. Science is nothing less than the technological foundation of cultural and economic achievements. It is not accidental that Yi Kwangsu considers science, or more precisely technology, as the fundamental motor of modernization. According to Yuk Hui, modernization cannot be separated from the change of scientific knowledge, in particular, of cosmology. Colonialisation was the process of imposing Western cosmology onto the non-Western countries and implementing Western science as a universal knowledge of nature. As Bently Allan argues, the ideas of scientific cosmology transformed the international order since 1550. The cosmological concepts of Western science facilitated the shift from the pre-modern order founded on divine providence to the current order premised on economic growth. The ideas of the connections between scientific cosmology and international politics strongly influenced Asian power elites who sought to find out the problem of their countries. The Chinese translation of Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International law with a Sketch of the History of the Science (萬國公法) accelerated Asian elites’ concerning the relation between scientific cosmology and its practical realization, i.e. international law. Law re-enframing life was inseparable from colonial biopolitics. The new global order as such was for colonial elites the technological incarnation of the Western cosmology.
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee is a professor of cultural studies at Kyung Hee University. He is an academic advisor for Gwangju Biennale, and one of the founders of Asian Theories Network(ATN). He organized The Idea of Communism Conference in Seoul with Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek in 2013 and edited the volume of The Idea of Communism 3.