ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Korean Marxist historiography in the life and writings of Paek Nam-un to disentangle the ironies of reinscribing the concept of the sovereign subject in Paek's attempts to form a secular discourse based on “science.” Paek's Marxism exemplifies the most explicit attempt to conjure and overcome the ideologies of colonialism, in his claims to take a scientific approach to Korean history. Paek in fact critiques nativist accounts of Korean history, arguing that an emphasis on Korea's particularity would only buttress the colonial claim that Korea's socioeconomic development was stagnant. Paek thus turns to a social scientific method as a way out of colonialism, not only in re-interpreting Korea's history, but also in proposing a postcolonial path forward to assert Korea's economic autonomy. The irony here, this chapter contends, is that Paek's very desire for a postcolonial path ends up reinscribing the colonial terms of enlightenment, universalism, and sovereignty.
