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제 86회 “Regimes of visibility” of Pyongyang – capital, spectacularity and topo-politics of distance

등록일 : 2014.12.03 조회 : 104
  

[규장각한국학연구원] 86회 콜로키엄 안내 : “Regimes of visibility” of Pyongyang - capital, spectacularity and topo-politics of distance

 

 

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규장각한국학연구원에서

1210일 수요일 오후 4시에 제86회 콜로키엄을 개최합니다. 장소는 규장각 1층 회의실(112)입니다.

이번 강연은 파리 사회과학 고등연구원(EHESS) 연구원으로 계신

Benjamin Joinau 선생님께서

 

“Regimes of visibility” of Pyongyang - capital, spectacularity and topo-politics of distance

 

이라는 주제로 발표해주실 예정입니다.

 

Benjamin Joinau 선생님께서는 파리 4대학(소르본느 대학)에서 고전문학, 철학으로 학사 학위를 받으셨고, 동대학원 고전문학 석사 학위를 받으시고, 파리 사회과학 고등연구원(EHESS)에서 문화인류학 박사 학위를 받으셨고, 현재 규장각한국학연구원에 펠로우로 와계십니다.

 

아래에 발표 개요를 첨부하오니, 관심 있는 많은 분들의 참여 부탁드립니다.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Regimes of visibility” of Pyongyang

- capital, spectacularity and topo-politics of distance

 

Benjamin Joinau (파리 사회과학 고등연구원)

 

I have studied elsewhere the way in which the imagination of the North Korean regime has been projected on the space of Pyongyang since the liberation up to our days, offering a topo-mythanalysis of the capital that not only pointed out visible structures, but also more symbolic axes. We could not only read the official mythology in the form of a theological discourse, but we also could define the dominant regime of imaginary (following Gilbert Durand’s mythodology) through a topological analysis of “lieux de mémoire” and landmarks of the system.

In this context, the North Korean capital becomes the field of a contemporary mythogenesis. The spectacular dimension is obvious in that process: a story is told not only to the residents of Pyongyang, but to the North Korean tourists and the foreign observers. This story is redoubled in concrete, steel and marble - in the very territory of the city, as to give it flesh and blood. The spectacularity of this urban plan means that it must be addressed as a communication act, in its illocutionary dimension, and not to be analyzed as an abstract and decontextualized text: Pyongyang in its monumental dimension is addressed to recipients selected by the regime (citizens, local and foreign visitors) to whom the city is shown (or made visible) as one would send a message.

The study however finds several “non-lieux” (non-places), or more precisely heterotopias (Foucault), i. e. non-visited, non-visitable or even sometimes hidden places. We thus discover another topology, consisting of these non-visible, or even in-visible spaces, and of all the places of intermediate status. Some monuments are visible from the outside, but not visitable, such as the Ryugyong hotel. In the case of this hotel, its status varied and evolved with time, from remoteness to proximity, and soon to the visit, which introduces us to the question of the diachrony of visibility. This also leads us to consider the concept of distance as a foundation of the spectacular order, particularly in the urban space: there are, as in marital relations in anthropology, a “proper distance” in the modern city’s vision. Isn’t modern urban planning, with, among other things, its notions of “perspective” and “monument”, a toponomia of the distances proper to spectacularity understood as both a staging and a Debordian spectacle? Let us remind that the spectacle according to Debord has to be understood as a social relationship mediated by images. In our context, it would be a social relationship mediated by places and monuments set in space.

We therefore realize that in Pyongyang, there is a dialectic of the distance to the places, and that it is determined by the status of the spectators (visitors or citizens). There are indeed different regimes of visibility depending on whether one is a simple tourist or a journalist, a foreign resident, a citizen or an apparatchik, and these regimes are themselves variable in time. There is a hierarchy of the visibility of the places of the un-showable to the “must-be-seen”: all sites are not equal under the spectacle! It is the study of these regimes of visibility of Pyongyang”s monuments and lieux de mémoire that we engage in this article, in order to detect the (social, political, and even geo-political) relationships that they structure and their role as strategies and control tools.

Indeed, the distanciation of the users of the city towards the latter or between them, seems to be a wonderful tool of social control. It just takes to observe how the physical distance between the citizen and the city can be transformed into an inner distance between citizens as a regulatory tool. What is, in the city, the right distance that must exist between citizens, and between them and the authorities that regulate their exchanges? The question of the distancing of the city sites by various agents of power refers to the issue of appropriation (see Certeau, Giard, Mayol, 1994). Urban distancing is a way to limit the appropriation and the area-fication (faire-quartier, Certeau) of the districts of the city, by relegating the monument and the landmarks to the sole public sphere of the space. It restricts and prohibits users “places of retreat” (Certeau). So it limits the citizens’ “desire of the city” to a visual and noetic (cultural, ideological, historical) consumption blocking the involvement in practices.

In the case of Pyongyang, the atomization of the users of the city, by a complex segregation of the different recipients over time, by differentiating multiple types of places according to their levels of visibility, and by this permanent interference of the visual order, tends to achieve a total “spectacular separation” (Debord). So the concentration of the spectacular, to be more effective, translates into a larger and especially more varied distanciation between the users and the urban space - which is an ultimate paradox: we have here a concentration of the spectacular which is operated by the explosion of the visibility in competing and contradictory regimes.

Finally, it will be interesting to ask when the monumentalization, the creation of landmarks and the urban planning of spaces, elements all necessary in the modern city, go from a mise en scène creating a social link to an alienating spectacularisation imposing its dogmatic and unequivocal mythology as the only possible narrative of the city and of the politics a spectacle in fact seeking to replace the social relationships. This is probably when the city becomes a capital, when it is reinvested by the political powers as the space for a narrative that transcends it, that is implemented the alienating spectacularisation harnessing complex visibility regimes that neither the secondary town nor the village concentrate in the same way. The “capital-making” process, in the most extreme cases, would be a strategy for control and regulation through the space, the architecture and the urban planning, integrated in a larger topo-policy of the social distance. It is to this capital-making process that, perhaps, urban citizens oppose their forms of passive resistance, such as the “area-fication”, all the alternative and participatory practices that promote appropriation in a modern reinvention of commons. In this respect, Pyongyang gives us a prime “exemplary” example of a “total” spectacular capital, which should eventually be put in parallel with the regimes of visibility of other capitals, to identify the variations of models according to political systems and the socio-cultural topics.

 

 

키워드: DPRK, urban planning, distance, spectacle, visibility

 

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Note: this is an abstract of an ongoing research. Please do not quote nor circulate without the authorization of the author.

“The Arrow and the Sun, Topomythanalysis of Pyongyang”, Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 14 n°1, April 2014.

 

 

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