Subimperialism and Perpetual Necropower: Foundational Violence and Mnemonic Self-killing on Jeju Island, 1947–Present

ABSTRACT Centering on a case of genocide that occurred on Jeju Island, 1947–onward, and the resulting memory politics that unfolded alongside the Jeju Truth and Reconciliation (TR) process in the 2000s, this article provides a novel critique of state-sanctioned reparatory processes in response to state violence. Adopting and revising the subimperialism framework, I challenge the prevalent teleological grammar in representing South Korean history. Rather than assuming a remedial function of the TR, I approach the TR as an epitome of subimperial and necropolitical interplay of power. Subimperialism is primary and perpetual, based upon foundational violence and is concomitant with perpetual death, physical and spiritual in form. I show, drawing from Mbembe, the perpetual operations of necropower (i.e. the destruction of the other’s humanity and simultaneous construction of the imperial selfhood), killing the other physically in 1947–1954 and then killing the other in themselves in collective memory in the 2000s. In the first body section, I delineate how foundational the Jeju Genocide was for South Korean subimperialism. I illustrate the way in which necropolitical self-making (of “South” Korean peoplehood) sustained concatenated developments of disciplinary, biopolitical, and sovereign power. The right-wing faction’s necropolitics was the centerpiece of the formation of “South” Korean peoplehood, preceding the state’s exercise of the aforementioned forms of power. In the second body section, I show how the necropower was embodied by genocide survivors committing mnemonic self-killing in rendering their own history. Under the perpetual necropower, many of the survivors refrained from archiving their own history, despite the Jeju TR programme intended to include the Jeju Islanders’ voice. Moreover, even those testifying for the TR reproduced a formulaic anticommunist taxonomy (“communist anti-nationals” versus “anticommunist patriots”) that has long excruciated the Jeju Islanders themselves.