Necessary, but impossible: Althusserian effects in South Korea

The article identifies four phases, from the 1980s to the present day, in a South Korean reception of Althusser’s work, placed under the sign of an aporia. In the context of the “controversy over the nature of Korean social formation” and the attempt to restore Marxism in the 1980s, Althusser was taken up as a “weapon of revolution” rather than as a philosopher representative of “Western Marxism”. His work could however only be appropriated if it was interpreted in a dogmatic Marxist-Leninist way. The author examines the implications of this, from the 1990s onwards, when a trend to the depoliticization of Korean public space got under way. This would provide the context for the taking up of “post-discourses” which would marginalize the Althusserian contribution, until the beginning of the 2010 decade.