THE SPATIAL UNCONSCIOUS OF GLOBAL AMERICA: A CARTOGRAPHY OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL SPACE AND CULTURAL FORMS by Koonyong Kim Department of English Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Fredric Jameson, Supervisor ___________________________ Michael Hardt ___________________________ Priscilla Wald ___________________________ Maurice Wallace ___________________________ Susan Willis Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2010 ABSTRACT THE SPATIAL UNCONSCIOUS OF GLOBAL AMERICA: A CARTOGRAPHY OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL SPACE AND CULTURAL FORMS by Koonyong Kim Department of English Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Fredric Jameson, Supervisor ___________________________ Michael Hardt ___________________________ Priscilla Wald ___________________________ Maurice Wallace ___________________________ Susan Willis An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2010 Copyright by Koonyong Kim 2010 Abstract This dissertation examines space as a privileged yet repressed site of cultural production in a global America, in response to ongoing attempts to reconfigure American literary and cultural studies through the lens of globalization, postnationality, worlding, and planetarity, and to build conversations between literature, the arts, and space. Drawing its inspiration from Henri Lefebvre’s work on the production of social space and Fredric Jameson’s theory of postmodern global culture, this project studies globalization with a particular emphasis on its unique spatial apparatus, which through geographical expansion and contraction and worldwide connection and disconnection produces hitherto unprecedented social spaces, including most notably the global city, virtual space, transnational diasporas, postmodern architecture, and the “non-places” of shopping malls, airports, and highways. I discuss how these global social spaces radically alter our experience of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) and transform our representational practices, by analyzing innovative contemporary cultural forms such as literary theory (Jameson, Derrida, Adorno, and Deleuze), deconstructive architecture (Peter Eisenman), video art (Nam June Paik), diasporic writing (Theresa Hak Kyung Cha), postmodern detective fiction (Paul Auster), the cyberpunk novel (William Gibson). While I thus mediate global spatial production and cultural production, I argue that the predominant focus on deterritorialization, disjuncture, and postspatiality in much of contemporary discourse on globalization oftentimes diverts our attention from the iv complex mechanism whereby the spatial world system of globalization brings the entire globe into its all-encompassing and totalizing force field. I formulate the concept of a spatial unconscious in order to address the salient, though repressed, presence of the totalizing spatial logic of global capitalism that underlies contemporary cultural production. In so doing, I demonstrate that diverse contemporary literary and cultural forms have their conditions of possibility the newly emergent global spatial network of cultural flows and exchanges; and that those literary and cultural forms function as symbolic acts or registering apparatuses that reflect, remap, and reimagine the multifaceted and even contradictory spatial configurations of the world today. By bringing a transnational and interdisciplinary perspective to American literary studies, this study seeks to shift our critical attention from a putatively unitary and homogeneous national literature towards manifold cultural loci crisscrossed by dynamic interplays and fluid interchanges amongst multiple axes and nodal points on the globe. v Acknowledgements Leibniz’s remark, “I thought I’d reached port, but found myself thrown back onto the open sea,” often reverberates in my mind these days as I complete this dissertation and approach a small port. Knowing that after this momentary euphoria-cum-lethargy evaporates into the air, I should embark on another journey, I would like to take this moment to acknowledge the wondrous seafarers I have met during my intellectual peregrinations at Duke and whose maps and guidance have helped me to better see the world and, more importantly, myself. My very special thanks go to my dissertation chair and advisor, Professor Fredric Jameson. Whether I was inspired or stumbled, he has always stood by me, showing more faith in my work and me than I could ask of him. I have been beyond fortunate to have him as my mentor for all these years. I will always remain grateful that he has shown me the prismatic world of literature, critical theory, and many other cultural forms: “Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, Luxe, calme et volupté.” I am also greatly indebted to Michael Hardt. His astute comments and practical advice on my project have always kept me sharp, while his unflagging commitment and caring encouragement have helped me through what could have been a solitary and “monadic” process of writing. Professor Susan Willis’ engaging guidance and exemplary scholarship have been a refreshing source of inspiration for me. With her insightful and keen perspectives on things, she has opened my eyes to how to read supermarkets, shopping malls, and other cultural and textual spaces. Other committee members, Priscilla Wald and Maurice Wallace, have also vi given me precious counsel whenever I needed it. My thanks are extended to Sarah Beckwith and Walter Mignolo at Duke, Alexandra Seung Hye Suh at Scripps College, Bruce Robbins at Columbia University, and Dominick LaCapra at Cornell University. I have been helped along by many other people and institutions while working on this dissertation. I want to thank Joan Ferguson at the Institute for Critical Theory at Duke and Mark Martin at Verso for allowing me access to Professor Jameson’s manuscripts even before their publication; Stephanie Cannizzo, Curatorial Associate at the Berkeley Art Museum, for her assistance with my research at the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Archive; and Ken Paik Hakuta at the Nam June Paik Studio for giving me permission to use some photographs of Paik’s material. I have also benefited greatly from a Fulbright Fellowship, the Cornell School of Criticism and Theory Fellowship as well as the Duke Graduate School’s James B. Duke Fellowship, Fred and Barbara Sutherland Dissertation Fellowship, and other research and travel grants. I toast my friends and fellow voyagers, especially Nicholas Young, Calvin Hui, Jenny Wills, Tess Shewry, Joe Fitzpatrick, Julie and Amy Kim, John Miles, Erin Gentry, Yoriko Dixon, and Pei-Ju Wu, as well as my Korean friends, Hyun-chul Kim, Kyung-il Sung, Jeongwook Shin, We Jung Yi, Min-Ah Cho, Sungwoo Ahn, Jinhan Jung, Hanwook Yoo, Yoonkyung Lee, Chaeho Shin, Juhyung Shim, Jayoung Min, and June Hee Kwon. Last but not least, I reserve my deepest gratitude for my parents, Sangdae Kim and Sookim Hwang, who have sacrificed so much in their lives to afford me the opportunities and privileges that they, themselves, have not had. I dedicate this dissertation to them with my everlasting love and admiration. vii CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................vi List of Figures .................................................................................................................. x PROLEGOMENA Planetary Imagination and the Space of Contemporary American Culture .... 1 Globalizing the Heim of American Culture and Its Repressed Other — Lost in Transnational — Totality, Space, and the Political Unconscious of Global America — Chapter Outline CHAPTER ONE Mapping the Spatial Unconscious of Globalization: Fredric Jameson, Jacques Derrida, and Peter Eisenman..................................... 37 Architecture as a Philosophical Model — Dismantling the Architectonics of Structuralist Hermeneutics — Mapping the “Non‐places” of Contemporary Thought — “Breaking back into History” — Marxism and the Onto‐theo‐archeo‐teleology of History — Postmodern Globalization and Its Antinomies — Jameson’s Cartography of Global Spatial Production — Derrida’s Nonlocus, Spacing, and Trace — Eisenman and a New Architectural Hermeneutic — Architecture of Différance and Its Spatial Unconscious — The Dialectic without Aufhebung — Global Capitalism and the Spatial Dialectic CHAPTER TWO Global/American Culture as (Non)Identity; Or, the Dialectic of Adorno’s Nomadology and Deleuze’s Monadology.….145 “The American Adorno” avec Deleuze — Adorno’s Negative Dialectics and the Metaphysics of the Present — Twelve‐Tone Music as a Philosophical Model — History and the “Aging” of Philosophy — Deleuze’s Nomadic Philosophy of Nonidentity — Deterritorializing Philosophy, or Constructing Smooth Space — Globalization as Identity — Philosophy as the Untimely — American Culture as (Non)Identity viii CHAPTER THREE “Simulated Pasts Resurrected in Memoriam”: The New Media(tion) of History in Nam June Paik and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha................................. 226 Postmodernism and Its Repressed — Nam June Paik, the Postcolonial Musician — Video Art