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Han And/As Ressentiment: Lessons from Minjung Theology religions Article Han and/as Ressentiment: Lessons from Minjung Theology † Sam Han Anthropology and Sociology, Korea Research Centre of Western Australia, The University of Western Australia, Perth 6009, Australia; [email protected] † This article uses the McCune–Reischauer system in romanizing Korean words. However, it retains the romanization system used in the original texts when quoting and for names of scholars and public figures. Abstract: Following calls in recent critical debates in English-language Korean studies to reevaluate the cultural concept of han (often translated as “resentment”), this article argues for its reconsideration from the vantage point of minjung theology, a theological perspective that emerged in South Korea in the 1970s, which has been dubbed the Korean version of “liberation theology”. Like its Latin American counterpart, minjung theology understood itself in explicitly political terms, seeking to reinvigorate debates around the question of theodicy—the problem of suffering vis-à-vis the existence of a divine being or order. Studying some of the ways in which minjung theologians connected the concept of han to matters of suffering, this article argues, offers an opening towards a redirection from han’s dominant understanding within academic discourse and public culture as a special and unique racial essence of Korean people. Moreover, by putting minjung theology in conversation with contemporary political theory, in particular the works of Wendy Brown and Lauren Berlant, this article hopes to bring minjung theology to the attention of critical theory. Keywords: han; minjung theology; ressentiment; emotional epistemology 1. Introduction Citation: Han, Sam. 2021. Han In a segment on a food and travel program called Parts Unknown, the late, chef-turned- and/as Ressentiment: Lessons from writer-turned-TV host Anthony Bourdain, is seated in the middle of a fish market, and Minjung Theology . Religions 12: 72. asks his dinner companion, “How come all the Korean guys are so tormented? They’re https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12020072 all carrying around some unseen weight”. His companion, a Korean, playing the role of ethnographic informant, responds, “Every single Korean person is born with this thing Academic Editor: Edward Foley called ‘han,’ which is a deep sorrow and anger. It’s nothing to do with upbringing”. Received: 5 January 2021 Bourdain interjects inquisitively, “It’s genetic”. She confirms, “Yeah, it’s genetic. It’s in Accepted: 21 January 2021 our blood”. Published: 22 January 2021 It would not be a stretch to say that this view of han is widespread not only among non-Koreans, like Bourdain, but also among Koreans living on the peninsula but also Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral in the diaspora. The basic explanation, as she says, is “because there’s been so much with regard to jurisdictional claims in wrong that’s happened to us”. This perspective, of han being something that exists in published maps and institutional affil- all Koreans, was common in popular culture and even academic discourse until recently iations. when critical debates on the concept in English-language Korean studies, film studies and cultural psychiatry began to emerge (Kim 2004; Kim 2017; Roberts et al. 2006). In the main, these reconsiderations have been motivated by the acknowledgement of the concept’s colonial origins (Freda 1999; Kim 2017; Watson 2007). The emphasis on the historicity of Copyright: © 2021 by the author. the concept attends to concerns raised by related critiques of the term which accuse it of a Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. specific sort of essentialism unique to Korea’s claims of unbroken homogeneity and ethnic This article is an open access article singularity. In this view, han is both metaphysical and genetic, somehow “running in the distributed under the terms and blood of all Koreans”. Thus, if one is “born Korean, one is born with han and cannot escape conditions of the Creative Commons it”. It has even been biomedicalized under the guise of hwa-pyong˘ (o# î)(Lee et al. 2014; Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// Min et al. 1997; Pang 1999). For Sandra So Hee Chi Kim, however, the sorrow associated creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ han 4.0/). with has come to problematically function as “pre-given,” to use Homi Bhabha’s words, Religions 2021, 12, 72. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12020072 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Religions 2021, 12, 72 2 of 11 an ethnic or cultural trait that has become naturalized. It has grown into a view as a kind of “originary Korean subjectivity” (Kim 2017, p. 257), and, quite often, becomes the basis for ethnonationalism. In pointing out the colonial and postcolonial aspects of han—from the exoticist aes- thetic racialization that came out of the so-called Korea Boom in the Japanese colonial period to its widespread adoption during the pro-democracy minjung movements that began in the 1970s—Kim makes the strong case that han is a colonial construct, “which Koreans themselves embraced as a special and unique racial essence” in order to “authen- ticate their feelings as part and parcel of a racial imaginary that distinguished Koreans from Japanese in an essential, biologistic way”. This idea then “translated itself into the discourse of ethnonationalism within a pervasively biologistic understanding of the Korean people as a nation” (Kim 2017, p. 264). Thus, han, while often typified in media and other cultural forms to express some sort of essentialized “Koreanness,” as demonstrated in the Bourdain segment above, is actually “invested with cultural and nationalistic significance” beyond a generalized self-reflection (Kim 2017, p. 255. Emphasis added). The term “invested” is notable here as it moves the conceptualization of han from an “essentialist Korean sociocultural concept that is popularly understood as a uniquely Korean collective feeling of unresolved resentment, pain, grief and anger” to “an affect, a habit, a practice and imaginary based within the sounds and scripts of colonial and postcolonial historical experience” (Kim 2017, p. 271). This is a shift that was initiated by earlier engagements with the concept in Korean studies and beyond. For instance, in his celebrated Han Unbound, sociologist and social theorist John Lie writes of han as “the cultural expression of ressentiment,” making sure to highlight the Nietzschean connotations. Han, for him, is the expression that results from “the accumulation of human tragedies” (Lie 2000, p. 114) both internal and external. For Lie, the understanding of han is necessarily historical if it is to function as a useful analytic tool and must attend to dynamics both internal and external. As Kim’s work attempts to denaturalize, that is, de-internalize, han and connect it to a regime of sociality, her argument foregrounds historical developments that may be characterized as those which acted upon Korea, including Japanese imperialism and the Cold War in the case of the Korean War. A consequence of this is the flattening of difference within Korea itself and amongst Koreans. That is to say, in Kim’s formulation, Korea (and by implication Koreans) has become monolithic in its internalization of postcolonial han. What Lie’s definition of han as ressentiment offers to Kim’s definition is a way to take account of the ways in which han has been deployed within Korean society, especially among those who have been at its margins. Therefore, this article aims to contribute to this critical discourse on han, analyzing it beyond originary subjectivity, trying to bring together aspects of Kim and Lie, attending to the historical nature of han (as emphasized by Kim) and understanding han as a cultural category not a biological one (as emphasized by Lie). It suggests that this project of renewal could draw fruitfully on recent political theory on ressentiment and, of all places, theology, in particular minjung theology, a movement often dubbed “Korean-style” liberation theology, which emerged in South Korea during the 1970s and is called a “theology of han” by its progenitors (Considine 2014, p. 56). Specifically, the way that the Korean theological movement conceptualized han as a way of connecting emotion to epistemology will be of key concern. To make this argument, this article proceeds in the following manner. It begins with an analysis of ressentiment, drawing on the work of political theorist Wendy Brown. It then moves on to discuss how ressentiment could be understood as an “epistemology” by engaging the work of Lauren Berlant, in particular the way she theorizes “sentimentality” both of and against “state emotion”. It then moves on to interpret minjung theology in more detail, digging into specific aspects of the understanding and deployment of han. Religions 2021, 12, 72 3 of 11 2. From Resentment to Ressentiment Political theorist Wendy Brown traces the concept of ressentiment to Nietzsche. She and others, such as Michael Ure and Didier Fassin, have spearheaded a reconsideration of Nietzsche to foreground the importance of, what she calls, the “codification of injury and powerlessness” in contemporary political life. For Nietzsche, she argues, ressentiment is undoubtedly a “critique of power from the perspective of the injured ... [that delimits] a specific site of blame for suffering” (Brown 1995, p. 27). As she puts it, “moral ideas are a . complaint against strength, [an] effort to shame and discredit domination by securing the ground of the true and the good from which to negatively judge it” (Brown 1995, p. 44). It not only “springs from” powerlessness but also “compensates” for it. It avenges an inca- pacity for action. Resentment becomes ressentiment as it becomes “a culture,” specifically one “whose values and ambitions mirror the pettiness of motivating force”. Ressentiment, by institutionalizing resentment, is able to construct an epistemology whereby specific “sovereign subjects and events” are held responsible for the social subordination of the injured. Thus, the epistemology of ressentiment “fixes the identities of the injured and the injuring,” resulting in what Brown dubs an “economy of perpetrator and victim”.
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