ISBN : 9782296545458
COMPETING SUBJECTIVITIES IN MASS DICTATORSHIP: -BETWEEN SELF-MOBILIZATION AND SELF- EMPOWERMENT
Saving Agents from the Martyrdom The idea of "mass dictatorship" originated in my encounter with the history and politics of coming to terms with the past in South Korea and Poland. In the midst of radical democratic transformations sweeping through these two societies at the end of the Cold War, I have experienced a complicated present history as a participatory observer wandering the transnational space between Korea and Poland. In the last two decades, these two post-totalitarian democracies have shared a history of martyrdom supported by the memory of tragic victimhood and crossed often by heroic resistance.1 Any challenge to this dominant memory in the post-totalitarian era would have been dismissed as politically "incorrect" in both countries. But a history of martyrdom, however popular, was only made possible by ironing crooked histories and memories, converting them into a neatly lined History. Plural memories betray and rupture such a linear History. As Vaclav Havel constantly stressed, the line did not run clearly between victimizers and victims. Rather, it ran th...