Papers by Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
Crisis and Critique, 2025
A century after Lenin's body was preserved in Moscow's Red Square, his theoretical and political ... more A century after Lenin's body was preserved in Moscow's Red Square, his theoretical and political legacy continues to shape contemporary geopolitics unexpectedly. This article examines the paradoxical nature of Lenin's preserved corpse as both a scientific achievement and a symbol of revolutionary aspirations, arguing that it is a material metaphor for Leninism's unfinished project. Through analysis of Lenin's theoretical innovations-particularly his approach to nationalism, state power, and revolutionary consciousness-its argument demonstrates how his ideas remain relevant to current political challenges. Special attention is paid to Lenin's conception of socialist consciousness as an external force and his dialectical approach to technological progress, exemplified in his strategic appropriation of Taylorism. The article engages with theoretical perspectives from Luxemburg, Schmitt, and Guattari to illuminate Lenin's distinctive contribution to revolutionary theory, particularly his understanding of the complex relationship between centralized organization and mass movements. These insights are particularly relevant for understanding contemporary developments, from Putin's complicated relationship with Lenin's legacy to China's fusion of central control with market efficiency. The article concludes that Lenin's theoretical framework, while historically bounded, offers crucial insights for conceptualizing resistance to capitalism's intensifying global logic.
Anglica, 2024
This essay explores the critical crisis stemming from the normalization of data-driven capitalism... more This essay explores the critical crisis stemming from the normalization of data-driven capitalism in the neoliberal era. It proposes the concept of subjectivization of anachronism, developed by French philosophers in the 1960s, as a potential avenue for revitalizing critical thought. The rise of data capitalism, characterized by big techdriven accumulation, emerged as a distinct mode of capitalist production during the postwar US-centric Cold War era and subsequent globalization from the 1950s onward. As artificial intelligence heralds a new technological paradigm shift, this essay examines the possibilities for critical subjectivity within this evolving landscape. By drawing on insights from 1960s French philosophy-a cornerstone of contemporary critical theorythe essay aims to reassess and reinvigorate critical discourse in the age of data capitalism.
Serpentine Pavilion, 2024
Symploke, 2022
thEorizing AsiA: An introduCtion AlEx tAEk-gwAng lEE In The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm sugges... more thEorizing AsiA: An introduCtion AlEx tAEk-gwAng lEE In The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm suggested the term "short twentieth century" to consider the extreme experiences of the century. The period refers to seventy-eight years between 1914 to 1991, beginning with the First World War and ending with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The fall of the German, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian empires during the First World War paved the way for the Second. When the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1941, it appeared that the war had come to an end, with the Allies' "justice league" destroying the Fascist alliance. Contrary to common belief, Hobsbawm emphasized that "the Second World War had barely ended when humanity plunged into what can reasonably be regarded as a Third World War" (1994, 226). After the fall of the Japanese Empire, the United States' most pressing mission in Asia was to build an anti-communist defense line rather than decolonize the countries. In Japan, the US enjoyed establishing "a completely unilateral occupation that excluded the USSR and any other co-belligerent" (227). While Europe settled into postwar conditions, the war did not end in Asia. Ironically, the end of World War II meant the beginning of civil wars in the area. As Hobsbawm pointed out, Asia was "the zone in which the two superpowers continued, throughout the Cold War, to compete for support and influence, and hence the major zone of friction between them, and indeed the one where armed conflict was most likely, and actually broke out" (227). This geopolitical confrontation resulted in widespread violence in the region. For Asians, the end of World War II did not signal the end of the conflict but rather the beginning of a new one. It all started with the people's yearning for nation-building following Japan's defeat in World War II. For example, the Korean people wanted to build a nation-state at the time, but the situation forced them to separate into two regimes-North and South Korea. The US policy to "roll back" communism introduced the cruel division of people, divided into the inclusive group and the exclusive group by the rule of anti-communism. This violent operation rolled out in many places in the Global South. The United States' overseas policy did not aim to build a democratic regime in the areas but prioritized
Unitas. (Print), 2022
This essay aims to discuss the "machinic enslavement" of capitalism across the globe through the ... more This essay aims to discuss the "machinic enslavement" of capitalism across the globe through the illustrative example of a Korean boy band (BTS). I argue that the rise of the BTS fandom is a cultural repercussion of depthless commodification in connection with the political logic of nationalism against the capitalist nihilism. Endorsing the concept of interpassivity, my argument will suggest that the interpassivity of fandom reveals the "depthlessness" of global capitalism against nationalism. The fans do not want to act as subjects but as delegates of their desire. What they desire is not the fulfilment of their wanting but the ongoing state of desiring as such. They are not interested in the object of the desire but the craving deference of the pleasure for the desire, for they must stop desiring if they can easily own the object. Therefore, BTS is not only a cultural commodity but also an intangible object beyond the pleasure principle.
Kritika Kultura
In this essay, I discuss how the mechanical scan of the brain becomes to be identified with consc... more In this essay, I discuss how the mechanical scan of the brain becomes to be identified with consciousness. For this purpose, I examine Angelo Mosso's ergograph and its influence on modern psychology. The fundamental problem of his experiment lies in that nobody knows how he measured the blood flow in the brain. Mosso's method to investigate the brain was unknown, but his description of the neural mechanism spread widely. However, Mosso's basic assumption has not fundamentally changed, even in today's neuroscientific context. The technological evolution offers more detailed images of the brain, but it does not necessarily allow us to understand the effects of its mechanism far differently from Mosso's early description. The visual images of the brain do not explain the mind-body relation adequately. William James's and Gilles Deleuze's insight into the said experiment disclose the vantage point of neuroscience. My conclusion is that the effects of the brain cannot be reduced to the scanned images of its mechanism.
Contemporary Political Theory, Apr 6, 2021
www.palgrave.com/journals propriety so characteristic of Marxism' (p. 1). As we shall see, the se... more www.palgrave.com/journals propriety so characteristic of Marxism' (p. 1). As we shall see, the semantic and etymological resonance between 'property' and 'propriety'-both of which have made their way into the English language through the linguistic genealogy of the Latin word pro¯prieta¯s-serves in his work as an aperture for identifying a dual theoretical problem, related on the one hand to ownership and on the other to 'propriety' (as in 'being right', 'appropriate'). Returning to a number of 'questions bequeathed to us by Marx' (p. 53) but offering a set of responses that are not 'strictly Marxist', Devenney raises a few challenges for post-foundationalist theorists, probing us to think again about how property structures and reproduces inequalities, and how to resist the hegemonic force of property in ways that are not reducible to representation, signification and identification. Considering how central property is to every facet of politics, from previous financial crises and the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic to colonial violence and climate change, the task of reinvigorating this debate is urgent. These questions deserve, and require, continued debate. In this Critical Exchange we have gathered five scholars, all engaged in post-Marxist and post-foundationalist traditions in different corners of the world (Argentina, South Korea, Sweden, UK and USA), to take up this challenge-and raise some challenges for the author, to which he has had the opportunity to respond. The result is best described as a transnational theoretical plurilogue in which the contributors do not always agree, but that may hopefully mark the beginning of future discussions on hegemony, property and post-foundationalism. Jenny Gunnarsson Payne Marx, democracy and magic: Disorienting impropriety Mark Devenney opens Chapter Four of Towards an Improper Politics with a reflection on Brian Friel's play Translations set in 19 th Century Ireland. He pauses over the character of Doalty, who, on his way home from the pub in the evenings, sabotages the British Army's colonising attempts to map Irish land. Each night Doalty shifts the soldier's measuring chains just enough to throw them into confusion, causing them to take their survey instrument apart, thinking the measuring device itself is broken. This is an example of Devenney's improper politics. Rather than confront domination head on, improper politics resists indirectly. It demonstrates that the arkhe, upon which a proprietary order is based, can no longer function. Yet Devenney's text carries an air of melancholy that casts doubt on the extent to which improper politics can bring meaningful change. Although it may never lead to the elimination of assemblages of order, I argue that the story of Doalty indicates how improper politics creates conditions for a radical reassembling. Crucially, this starts with our propriety, our everyday behaviours, that through conformity uphold the assemblages that dominate our lives.
alienocene.com, 2022
We are tribeless and all tribes are ours. We are homeless and all homes are ours. We are nameless... more We are tribeless and all tribes are ours. We are homeless and all homes are ours. We are nameless and all names are ours.-Emmanuel Lacaba In 1808, Charles Fourier wrote that "the most icy climates in the world, such as those on a line from St Petersburg to Okhotsk, will enjoy temperatures such as can as yet only be found in the most renowned resorts, like Florence, Nice, Montpellier and Lisbon, blessed as they are with gentle and unruffled skies." 1 This statement might be the earliest indication of a climate change issue that has become our reality. Furthermore, the French utopian communist correctly pointed out such global warming would occur in combination with the "universal cultivation" of the Earth. For Fourier, the "cultivation" would be accompanied by "false industry," such as monopolization, financialization and colonization, which structurally dovetailed with
Kritika Kultura, 2022
In this essay, I discuss how the mechanical scan of the brain becomes to be identified with consc... more In this essay, I discuss how the mechanical scan of the brain becomes to be identified with consciousness. For this purpose, I examine Angelo Mosso's ergograph and its influence on modern psychology. The fundamental problem of his experiment lies in that nobody knows how he measured the blood flow in the brain. Mosso's method to investigate the brain was unknown, but his description of the neural mechanism spread widely. However, Mosso's basic assumption has not fundamentally changed, even in today's neuroscientific context. The technological evolution offers more detailed images of the brain, but it does not necessarily allow us to understand the effects of its mechanism far differently from Mosso's early description. The visual images of the brain do not explain the mind-body relation adequately. William James's and Gilles Deleuze's insight into the said experiment disclose the vantage point of neuroscience. My conclusion is that the effects of the brain cannot be reduced to the scanned images of its mechanism.
UNITAS, 2022
This essay aims to discuss the "machinic enslavement" of capitalism across the globe through the ... more This essay aims to discuss the "machinic enslavement" of capitalism across the globe through the illustrative example of a Korean boy band (BTS). I argue that the rise of the BTS fandom is a cultural repercussion of depthless commodification in connection with the political logic of nationalism against the capitalist nihilism. Endorsing the concept of interpassivity, my argument will suggest that the interpassivity of fandom reveals the "depthlessness" of global capitalism against nationalism. The fans do not want to act as subjects but as delegates of their desire. What they desire is not the fulfilment of their wanting but the ongoing state of desiring as such. They are not interested in the object of the desire but the craving deference of the pleasure for the desire, for they must stop desiring if they can easily own the object. Therefore, BTS is not only a cultural commodity but also an intangible object beyond the pleasure principle.
Comparative Literature, 2017
The purpose of my essay is to set forth a comparative approach to Adorno and Lukács to discuss th... more The purpose of my essay is to set forth a comparative approach to Adorno and Lukács to discuss the function of an artwork in the capitalist society. The perspective of mimesis crucially leads Adorno to the way in which he considers Enlightenment as a paradoxical process of civilization itself, a process precipitating intellectual regression. For Adorno, the Enlightenment project increasingly destroys the sensuous mimetic faculty, while fortifying reification and instrumental reason; however, Adorno finds the remnants of the preserved sensuous mimesis in art; art is a mutated mimesis through the modern rationalization process, by which rationality is combined with the sensuous mimetic faculty. In this respect, Adorno argues that art is a refuge for mimetic comportment. Here, Adorno chooses a different path from Benjamin, who conceptualizes the autonomy of artworks as a magical aura. It is interesting that Adorno specifically points out the paradoxical character of art by which the subject exposes itself, at various levels of autonomy, to its other, separated from it and yet not altogether separated. When considering that modern subjectivity is closely related to the Cartesian cogito, what Adorno implies in his analysis is that art is a rational device to disavow magical practices the mimesis of art is possible by its rational feature. More importantly still, the paradoxical mimetic faculty of art leads to irrationality by means of its rationality, in the sense that all rationality aims at necessarily achieving something irrational.
TripleC, 2018
As a prolegomena to writing a critique of contemporary capitalism which takes into account its se... more As a prolegomena to writing a critique of contemporary capitalism which takes into account its semiotic, affective dimensions and which emphasises the notion of hyper-capitalism with Asian characteristics, and in considering the nature of the floating, heterogeneous population of the lumpenproletariat in the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century, the authors believe they remain faithful to Marx and the 11th thesis on Feuerbach. Bringing a unique perspective to the debate and raising pressing issues regarding the exploitation of the lumpenproletariat, we are not content to merely revisit the concept of the lumpenproletariat in Marx's writings such as The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) but to apply this concept to the contemporary conditions of capitalism and especially to the loci of the precariat in Asia. Our goal is to begin to account for the changing demographic of labour flows, the precarity of life, the modern day slavery which takes place in our time. In examining the passage from the lumpenproletariat, hitherto defined as "non-class" or "people without a definite trace", to lumpen-precariat, defined as people not seen in Asian economies (refugees, the illegally employed, illegal migrants, nationless foreign labour, the withdrawn clan, sex industry workers, night workers; those behind walls, gated communities, and other entrance-exit barriers), this paper discloses not only the subsistence of those in the non-places of the world-in the technocratic-commercial archipelago of urban technopoles-but also and, arguably more importantly, on the Outside, namely the rest of the planet, the other six-sevenths of humanity. This paper looks for "a" missing people, "a" singular, people yet to come, those exiled, excluded and unseen-sited on the edges of respectable society.
Academia Letters, 2022
The Korean zombie craze suddenly starts to attract global attention. Train to Busan (2016) was it... more The Korean zombie craze suddenly starts to attract global attention. Train to Busan (2016) was its beginning point, and this trend culminated due to the extreme fascination with the Netflix series Kingdom (2019). The zombie genre is not popular in Asian countries, even to this day, whereas ghost stories have still dominated the mainstream cultural market. Contrary to ghost fantasy, which is rather based on the romantic imagination, the logic of the zombie genre is more inclined to science fiction. There are always scientific reasons for the genesis of zombies, such as radioactive repercussions, viral pandemics, chemical pollution, etc. Scientific knowledge is usually applied to link zombies and their conditions in these fictional narratives. Another reason for the Asian indifference to the Hollywood genre would be its political rhetoric, which is not yet adaptable to the "Asiatic mode of production." Since George A. Romero's film Night of the Living Dead (1968), a zombie has served as a popular allegory for the critique of so-called "late capitalism." The genre as such waned for a while but was widely revived in the 1990s, growing in popularity after the rise of video games such as Resident Evil and The House of the Dead. Zombies, the colonial otherness of the non-Europe, then turned the monstrous figure of consumerism and its unstoppable greed. In Dawn of the Dead (1978), Romero's sequel to Night of the Living Dead, a shopping mall is described as the hell of cannibalistic capitalism, in which the living dead walks around without agency. A zombie is not the only horrific figure to remind us of the cruel reality of capitalism. Meanwhile, Karl Marx was glad to use a vampire metaphor to portray the capitalist exploitation of the working class. He said that "capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks." 1 Marx's metaphor
Revista Internacional de Filosofía Hodós (Ὁδός), 2021
In this essay, I will argue the relationship between Foucault's concept of political spirituality... more In this essay, I will argue the relationship between Foucault's concept of political spirituality and the Iranian Revolution. Regarding Foucault's concept of political spirituality‖, what must be stressed is that spirituality is combined with politics. For him, spirituality is a desire to liberate the body from the prison of the soul. He regarded spirituality as nothing to do with a religious doctrine, while he did not reject that Shi'i Islam was the source of political spirituality. Therefore, it would be necessary to ask what kind of politics can be realized through spiritual practice. I contend that this question is about the rationale of Foucault's intervention into the Iranian Revolution. Unlike mischievous Western propaganda, the establishment of theocracy was a realistic solution to the limit of liberal democracy. The disjunctive dualism of political Islamism, affirming a difference between the representative democracy and God's decision, suggests an alternative to Schmitt's answer to the question concerning liberal democracy. I argue that God is nothing else than the void of sovereign power, prohibiting any human tyrant who would occupy the place of absolute authority. Only divine violence can be possessing the authority to suspend the legal system and declare a state of exception. Foucault's concept of political spirituality should be grasped with this concept of political Islamism to solve the problem of liberalism.
Kritike , 2021
In this essay, I will discuss the political economy of global mobility through an analysis of the... more In this essay, I will discuss the political economy of global mobility through an analysis of the relationship between nation-states and globalization. Today’s aspect of global mobility lies with the logistics of people and goods within and beyond the national governmentality. These logistics flows construct the supply chain locally and globally with infrastructures, people, goods, and information. What must be stressed here is the new role of nation-states in the rise of globalizing logistics. Following the neoliberal model, each nation-state takes on a crucial role in creating markets. In this situation, the dialectics of tourists and the multitude is noteworthy. While the multitude does not belong to the nation-states any longer, tourists as consumers are entrapped to the category of the labor force, i.e., the commodification of labor power. If people want to move from one nation-state to another nation-state, they have to choose whether to be a labor commodity or a consumer. The working class is the moveable population and portable labor force, yet they are legally obliged to stay within a specific territory. It is not labor force but money or a commodity that is permitted to travel around. Although a commodity can be exchanged with money, they are not the same. The monetary circulation brings out the capitalist mobility of production, whereas a commodity completes its final function when it is consumed. In other words, consumption means the withdrawal of a commodity from the circulation. When a commodity is consumed, its function is done, its form finally annihilates, and then money moves from one territory to another in search of different commodities. Global mobility is fueled by the monetary flow, the financial flux in a global scope; nevertheless, its real excursion cannot be withdrawn from the political economy of the Urstaat. I contend that this double-binding relationship is the political deadlock of the Empire and the nation-states.
Deleuze and Guattari Studies , 2021
The purpose of this essay is to discuss Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the Third World. For De... more The purpose of this essay is to discuss Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the Third World. For Deleuze and Guattari, however, the Third World is not only a geographical term, but also one that denotes the linguistic zones, another term of the minority. The essay argues that the concept of the Third World is related to minor literature, the minor or intense use of language. This 'transcendental exercise' of writing is an opposition to the initial purpose of language, namely representation. Language must escape from its normative usage, and then be liberated to a new spatio-temporality, in other words, the linguistic Third World zones. My conclusion is that the creation of Third World linguistic zones is the repetition of differences against the generalisation of representation, such as becoming non-human and non-European, not in imitation of the molar form of the animal or a non-continent extending terrestrial power into the ocean, but as the right way to invent the people missing in the Third World. Inventing the people of the Third World is the right condition in which alternative political subjects can be produced through desubjectification, not domestication, by capitalist axiomatics. In this way, Deleuze's political philosophy aims to use the virtual politics of the Third World to radicalise the actual representation of the existing Left.
Contemporary Political Theory, 2021
Studies in Philosophy and Education, 2021
In the South Korean film, The Parasite, the underling family, in an act of desperation, uses dece... more In the South Korean film, The Parasite, the underling family, in an act of desperation, uses deceptive means to infiltrate the rich family. The term parasite refers nominally to the underling family, and their efforts to befriend and inhabit the class territory and social hierarchy of the rich family. How can this be of use for education? To answer this, we ask: what can we learn from Parasite to inform contemporary philosophy of education? Primarily , this experimental piece written from different philosophical viewpoints, suggests that the images, narrative, and social context of the film cannot be read stereotypically. Using a blend of Deleuze and Stiegler 'cinema-theory', we present a heuristic perspective on the Parasite from three viewpoints: (1) South Korean society, and how a pedagogy of the parasite helps to understand the dynamics of contemporary philosophy of education in a global context. South Korea is uniquely placed at the cusp and threshold of deterritorializ-ing Western capitalism, given its position next to the only intact communist state system; (2) The film shows how theorizing an exceptional notion of time contributes to the overall pedagogy of the parasite. Here, being a parasite is about waiting to attach oneself to a host, yet this waiting is an anxious, perceptive, adherent time, a reciprocal time, and one internally interconnected to that of the host; (3) The ethics of the parasite. The parasite chooses a host from a certain viewpoint before attaching itself and trying to be absorbed into the host. The pedagogy of the parasite suggests a unique ethical treatment of these assimilative processes and allows us to consider cinema as a parasitic means to shake the passive audience out of its stupor when bearing witness to the violence in the film and its own collusion in the trauma and reality of contemporary capitalism.
Positions, 2020
The Survival of Capitalism Since the financial crisis of 2008, we have witnessed astounding procl... more The Survival of Capitalism Since the financial crisis of 2008, we have witnessed astounding proclamations indicating that capitalism is dead or at least dying. The similar scene repeats in this COVID-19 pandemic situation. Some experts quickly anticipate the end of global capitalism and the return of the new cold war. Rhetorical expressions such as these emerging from the left were not surprising; however, in this case, the subjects of these utterances were interesting enough. They were not the left, but preferably those who had stood in opposition to the leftist demand to end capitalism. Politicians, policymakers, people in business as well as liberal economists, even comedians, seemed to be waiting for the last breath of capitalism. However, capitalism did not die. It has survived, and so we still live in a world of ridiculous "transformers." Why is this happening? How does capitalism sustain itself ? There are lots of arguments to support the life of capitalism. Still, I think this is the point where we should return to Marx's analysis of capitalism, his approach to the secret of capital, so to speak, the problem of a commodity. We need to reconsider the enigmatic relationship between commodities and capitalism. The material foundation of global capitalism resides in the multinational divisions of labour and the worldwide distribution of commodities. In this capitalist logistics, Asian countries have played a crucial role after the Second World War. The Cold War was the geopolitical strategy to invent so-called Asia. For most of the people in Asia, the Cold War was not so much "cold" as "the hottest" warfare. After the collapse of the socialist bloc, Asian countries seemed turned to be "Factory Asia" based on regional supply chain and the cheap labour-power in the global economy. One day, Asia was the revolutionary countries of a red flag, but now turned the land of promise for global capitalism. Global task allocation allowed China to be the central hub of Global Value Chain (GVC), at the same time, accelerated the integrated trade and disintegrated production. This global transformation ended up with the separation between consumption an production, which seemed to undermine the role of the nation-states in the international relations. As Zygmunt Bauman positions politics EPISTEME ISSUE 3 1
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Papers by Alex Taek-Gwang Lee
The Bloomsbury Handbook of World Theory examines what “world” means and what it accomplishes in different zones of academic study. The contributors raise questions such as: What happens when “world” is appended to a particular form of humanistic or scientific inquiry? How exactly does “worlding” bear on the theoretical operating system and the history of that field? What is the theory or theoretical model that allows “world” to function in a meaningful way in coordination with that knowledge domain?
With contributions from 38 leading theorists from a vast range of fields, including queer studies, religion, and pop culture, this is the first large reference work to consider the profound effect, both within and outside the academy, of the worlding of discourse in the 21st century.
The pursuit of communism has a long history throughout the Asian region.
For countries like North and South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and China, the passage to a form of ‘modernity’ is even unthinkable without this history.
The struggle between communism and anti-communism still defines the region’s politics. The anti-communism once employed during the Cold War era, especially in South Korea, has not yet faded away, and is still used for attacking the left in many Asian countries. In this sense, Asia is a lively location for discussing the idea of communism from a non-Western perspective and evaluating whether the idea is universal; or, instead, whether it is to be defined by its regional situation, or by its historical or temporal moment or movement(s). The idea of communism, as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek conceive it, involves the global struggle towards absolute equality. Seoul, the capital of South Korea, was chosen as the conference venue because here the idea of communism is once again in the air, reinsinuating the excluded passion for the real into the struggle for independence, justice and rights, into the seamless reality of global capitalism. The Korean peninsula is divided into two regimes, the North being an ‘actually existing’ communist country and the South, on the contrary, a highly developed capitalist country. But a conference such as this could never take place in the North, any more than in China. How should we read this apparent paradox? Here, in summary form, we have the history of communism’s development: the negation of communism = anti-communism, and then the liberal negation of anti-communism (negation of the negation) = anti-anti-communism. But what of communism itself? As the authors in this collection all agree, today one should face up squarely to the legacy of anticommunism, and also to its future, and to the political and intellectual oppression of the idea of communism. Crucially, however, the alternative to such oppression is nothing so negative as anti-anti-communism in the Asian context. The contributors to this volume intervene on many issues relating to the reassessment or reaffirmation of the idea of communism in light of the various political experiments found across Asia and elsewhere.