nationalism

Hyun Sook Kim's essay examining representations of working-class South Korean sex workers for U.S. military in popular and radical texts, both of which fix the identities of the women as "bad"/"good" and treat the female body as a metaphorical map of the Korean nation.

Published in Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism (2012).

Of the many utopian positions widespread in the left today, some of the most persistent – and misguided – are various manifestations of pacifism. At its core, this type of thinking can be reduced to a single fundamental assumption: that the atrocities of imperialist war can be overcome and allayed without the disappearance of class society.

The “synchronised stagnation” of the global economy since 2008 shows the capitalist class everywhere has no solution to economic crisis. Hence ever more strident nationalism has been adopted across the globe. It even engulfs its two greatest powers, now locked in a trade war. This nationalism is their “alternative”. For them the problem is not capitalism but one form of it – globalisation. The fact is that the continued existence of the system in any form means more misery for most.

The real division we face is not Leave versus Remain, or No-Deal versus soft Brexit, but between those who have an interest in creating a fundamentally different kind of society and those who do not.