“Poetics of Latency: Genealogy of Negativities,” in Sangdon Kim: Listening to the Secret Words
of Profane and Sacred from the Other Side of Landscape (Seoul: Hyunsilmunwha 2012).
The primary context of Sangdon Kim’ work is the negativity of modern South Korean history that
emerged through its precarious geopolitical condition and the prolonged ruptures: the Japanese
colonial regime, interventions of superpowers, the Korean War and the ensuing national division,
and the military regimes that exploited the ideological oppositions. In grappling with the
nation’s difficult past, however, Kim is interested not so much in the grand scheme of things
but rather in representing those that are considered incomplete, abandoned, exhausted, lowly,
concealed, and the anonymous, whether living or inanimate. In particular, this essay probes
Kim’s work in relation to the subalterns who “disappeared” under the Park Chung Hee’s
militaristic regime during the Cold War era. I consider Kim’s work an attempt to both grapple
with the legacy of Minjung art, a pro-democracy grass roots movement, and move beyond its
shortcomings, namely, Minjung movement’s failure to include the subalterns in its construction
of the notion of “people.” Indeed, Kim’s work may be explained in terms of genealogy of many
failures in modern Korean history. Furthermore, I interpret his work as an aesthetic practice
that produces knowledge of the anonymous and self-understanding for Asian countries that
experienced colonial past, imperialism, and the Cold War.