Commodifying Kim Jong-Il?
In Kim Jong-Il's imagination, the world may have been split in two: in one bloc, an oppressive and imperialist outside organized around commodities and in the other, an isolated nation united around the Juche principles of self-reliance and state socialism.
But who can say? Maybe the deceased Supreme Leader recognized the similarities underlying this divide when he wasn't spaced out on one of his 20,000 movies.
As the old Marxist legend goes, commodities are concepts that subsume the messy and ambiguous ingredients of the world into convenient standardized forms, which can start to look like the inevitable products of nature instead of the work of our imagination. In North Korea, like in Stalin's Soviet Union, the state's institutions are set up as the totalitarian unifying framework that can protect a malleable people from an equally totalizing, false-consciousness-breeding enemy. Notwithstanding claims about the inevitable march of history toward communism, the "product" system in the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea has all the trappings of another arbitrary commodified apparatus, a continuation of capitalist good circulation in a more explicitly regimented form, with stipulations in the Constitution that the State, "establish a new socialist way of life in every sphere" including a "cost accounting system" utilizing "such economic levers as prime costs, prices, and profits".
Regardless of how Kim Jong-Il saw things, and regardless of whether this regime has anything to do with the ideals of socialism or communism, some of his mourners have continued the tradition of imagining a Manichaean struggle between two dueling, pre-fabricated blocs. The dear Leader plays the time-worn role of the rebel carrying the Promethean torch of the global proletariat.
As Not A Dinner Party put it in a eulogy:
Kim Jong Il died as the leader of his independent and proud nation; unbowed, unbeaten and untouchable by Empire.[via]
This narrative is couched in the language of Hardt and Negri- a totality split between a restrictive Empire and a Multitude yearning to breathe free. But there are a couple major differences between the commodified concepts in this tale and the potential reality on the ground. In the political theorists' vision, the immanent force of the people may soon overcome the transcendent mediating power of the State and Corporation: they tell us we won't need separate institutions to represent us if we realize that we can govern ourselves.
But we get a convoluted story if we combine the Kim Jong-Il eulogy with the narratives available in the public sphere. A man and bureaucracy allegedly responsible for the starvation of thousands of North Koreans stand as agents of the multitude because they offer an alternative to a global system of trade led by corporate boards and liberal bureaucrats. Really? Then again, North Korea is relatively isolated from the system coordinated by the IMF and WTO, and has managed to survive (with mass fatalities) even with a widespread embargo ( including the US since 1950).
The unusually transcendent divide between the state and its exterior poses a challenge to investigators, but the rumors supposedly leaked to the outside could be equally telling. Marx and Lenin, both critics of nationalism, are allegedly banned or unavailable in North Korea. Still, maybe support for hermetic, centralized patriotism is widespread and voluntary in the Democratic People's Republic, and it seems natural to have a policy stipulating the exclusive distribution of Korean authors.
In any case, world-historical perspective may be an inappropriate way to present a multifaceted individual. This is the same Kim Jong-Il who was a big movie buff, had a unique lifestyle, etc, etc....Who knows? A century from now, we may still be absorbing the continued Spectacle of IMPORTANT FIGURES AND EVENTS. As we leave the PEOPLE'S OPERA after a performance of the Juche Rainbow, you and I may raise a couple Leader-ly toasts to his complex afterlife.