Western-Centrism and Contemporary Korean Political Thought

Michel Foucault famously stated that the modern West, while priding itself of its "democracy", has failed to abandon autocracy by refusing to "cut off the king's head". This fact is patently evident in the global arena in the continued Western assertion of planetary hegemony and domination. In his book, Kang Jung In valiantly wrestles with this conundrum from a "subaltern" Korean perspective, placing his hope in the emergence of a global civil society marked by "polycentric multiculturalism". Without equating a stubborn local retreat, polycentrism in his view requires a combination of global openness and cultural resistance, more specifically a "modernization of tradition" involving "learning the new by reviewing the old". Powerfully argued, the book is a vade mecum for anyone seeking a transit from Western-centrism into a more equitable global interaction among countries and civilizations. -- Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame
Kang Jung In's book is a courageous and tenacious attempt to measure the cost to modern Korean understandings of politics inflicted by the western provenance of most of the central categories through which its citizens now speak and think about the forms political life assumes in Korea  today. It draws on his experience of being taught by Hanna Pitkin to assess the prospects for re-centering their understanding in Korea itself -- John Dunn, Fellow of King's College & Emeritus Professor of Political Theory, University of Cambridge