Damunhwa as Sensitivity Rearing Programs

Damunhwa as Sensitivity Rearing Programs*

By EuyRyung Jun,
Ph.D. Student, Anthropology,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Terrence Turner, an anthropologist, has once distinguished what he calls “critical multiculturalism” from what he calls “difference multiculturalism” (1993). According to him, while the former uses cultural difference and diversity as the basis of challenging, rethinking, and relativizing the dominant culture of power, the latter tends to reify and even fetishize difference and otherness. In Alain Badiou’s term, it is a “tourist’s fascination for the diversity of morals, customs and beliefs” (2001: 26). Arguing the notion of a ‘recognition of the other (e.g., Taylor 1994) does not shed any light on the concrete real, Badiou criticizes contemporary ethics for being reduced to humanitarianism and discourses of rights to difference. He continues that the ‘differences’ that are so much celebrated in such discourses are only ‘acceptable differences’ – if not exactly the same as ‘us’ (24). This is the ethics of dominant groups that distinguishes what is acceptable from what is not in its conception of difference. That is, while a display of ‘benign differences’ is openly appreciated and consumed under the narcissistic celebration of the tolerant or cosmopolitan self, any radical difference is used to justify further exclusion of foreigners and migrants, which again leads to naturalization and racialization of culture, and fixation of identities. In a similar vein, Mahmood Mamdani warns against what he calls the “culture talk” or “culturalization of politics,” a process in which political issues, relations, and processes are explained as results or parts of some ‘cultural essences’ (2000; 2004).
“The subject of multicultural sensitivity is almost always marked as native Koreans distinguished from their objects, i.e., migrants and racially mixed people and families.”
Although the discourse of damunhwa in Korea has appeared only recently – in early to mid-2000s and thus it is difficult to predict exactly how it will evolve, the present movements in the country invite many of the above critiques. A few of the characteristics of the phenomenon of damunhwa in Korea can be summarized as follows. First, the majority of actors who mobilize damunhwa and tolerance towards Other are middle-class Koreans working in NGOs, government, and academic sectors. Second, most of what are called damunhwa programs organized by local NGOs and sponsored by state agencies feature cultural festivals and cultural classes where individuals, who are mostly Koreans, can learn about migrants’ traditional cultures and experience exotic cuisines, costumes, and customs (or the 3Cs). Third, while ‘culture’ in the discourses of damunhwa is often referred to mean something natural, essential, and thus before or separate from politics,[1] cultural difference and rights to it emerged as something to be protected unconditionally. Fourth, it has become a widespread practice, especially among concerned NGO, government, academic, and media circles, to use the word damunhwa to directly refer to migrants’ racially different and mixed family and children, e.g., damunhwa gajong (“multicultural family”) and damunhwa orini (“multicultural children”).[2]

All of the above tendencies combined together in damunwha discourses and practices, I argue, depoliticize the issues of difference and otherness transforming them into a technical matter; individual Koreans can simply improve their attitudes towards foreigners and migrants, be open and tolerant towards their different food, customs, and cultures, and thus develop what is called damunhwajok gamsusong (“multicultural sensitivity”). In her powerful critique of discourses of tolerance, Wendy Brown notes how they always designate tolerating subjects separately from tolerated objects, in which the latter “will always be those who deviate from the norm, never those who uphold it, but they will also be further articulated as (deviant) individuals through the very discourse of tolerance.” (2006: 44). She continues to criticize how tolerance discourses involving minority groups redefine the problem of inequality and social justice as that of “therapeutic and behavioral” one (16):

It is important to note how various damunhwa programs that have emerged since early 20
00s have been precisely focusing on rearing multicultural and human rights-friendly sensitivity among individual Koreans. In one of the interviews I conducted in 2006, the representative of a local NGO, who initiated the first such program in the migrant advocacy circle, asserted how it felt necessary to organize a program for local residents to develop a cultural sensitivity needed to co-exist peacefully with migrants. She especially emphasized how Koreans are ignorant of diverse and different cultures of migrants and how such ignorance may become a significant barrier in bridging the social gap and distance between Koreans and migrants. Another interview I conducted in the same year with another activist from a different organization reverberated a similar logic in organizing damunhwa programs. What they commonly agreed upon is the importance of damunhwa education on children that such sensitivity training on difference and human rights is much more effective when done in and on the youth. The children who learn to respect others’ difference and rights would grow as good multicultural citizens. For example, the pamphlet of the “human rights class - difference means beautiful,” one of such programs for children organized by a local NGO introduces the class like below:

Our human rights class - difference means beautiful is an Asian cultural experience and human rights education program that supports our children to become free from prejudices and fear of what is different from us and to grow up as healthy and tolerant members of society who are capable of cohabiting with global citizens through experiences in cultures of various Asian countries.

The program is apparently focused on developing multicultural sensitivity among the ‘native,’ or racially or ethnically Korean, children who are referred to as “our children” vis-à-vis migrants and their children. The subject of multicultural sensitivity is almost always marked as native Koreans distinguished from their objects, i.e., migrants and racially mixed people and families. Increasingly, while munhwa, or “culture,” in the term da-munhwa, or multi-culture, is used to refer not simply to any culture[3] but specifically to those that have been stigmatized as inferior, undesirable, peculiar, primitive, and/or under/less-developed, things Korean, e.g., Korean culture and Korean people, are further articulated as a relatively color-less, ‘culture’-less subject thus assuming a position of universality and reasserting superiority vis-à-vis migrants’ particularity and their inferiority (Brown 2006; Zizek 1997).

To sum up, more or less operating as a technical manual of how to treat better and behave with various Others, damunhwa programs as they emerged in Korea naturalize existing power relations between natives and migrants, and citizens and foreigners by defining an issue of structural inequality as a matter of developing and improving individual sensitivity. Discussions on issues of difference and inequality cannot simply be reduced to a narcissistic critique of the Korean self or a matter of individual activists’ good will to build a ‘good society.’ Rather, what we need now is a radical inquiry on the political, economic, and social conditions in which discourses of damunhwa have emerged in Korea and their overall effects.##

* This is a part of a paper titled Beyond Damunhwa and Discourses of Sensitivity Rearing, which was delivered at the IAPH Symposium XIII, Seoul, Korea, 2008.

[1] For example, in a symposium titled “Making Multi-Cultural Society: Comparison between Germany and the U.S,” held in May 2008, I observed how some of the participants, who were indeed debating against one another, more or less treated ‘culture’ commonly as some kind of sanctuary from things political.
[2] I have even encountered a term such as “damunhwa tea”!
[3] The term damunhwa is hardly used to refer to things that have been traditionally associated with powerful Others, e.g., ‘American culture,’ ‘Japanese food,’ or ‘French literature.’