- Overview
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This is a humanities essay that has come at a very appropriate time to guide us how to live in the post-Corona virus era.
- Book Intro
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A literary essay of musings that resembles the writing style on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. An essay of short, staggered texts that are open and each fully functional by themselves. At the same time, they are texts that are easy to be widely shared. The author of A Recluse Machine has chosen such a writing style intentionally.
The recluse that the author refers to is not a detached and snobbish escapist or someone seeking refuge from the world. It refers to everyday practices such as “social distancing” that are taking place these days or a “securing of mental distance.” In fact, we have already started seclusion without realizing it. As Deleuze said, humans are machines that cut food, machines that speak and stop, and machines that breathe and stop; we are also “recluse machines.” A machine that secludes itself to break away from overheated capitalism, to avoid the excessive gazes of people, and to avoid a dangerous virus. Now we need seclusion, not sociability.
Western social theory has grasped society from the point of view of “actors” who always act positively and calculate rationally. It models the active male. What does not act is ignored or not given existence. But in society, there are those who are acted upon as well as those who act. Recluse machines are very similar to the former. They just endure many things in the world. In seclusion, in a place where participation in the world is discouraged, they disperse like refugees, flee, and stubbornly remain. At the same time, they love life.
This book can be opened and read from any page. Each “part” is more intense than the “whole.” An assemblage of thoughts. This book itself can be said to be a form of seclusion that Kim Hongjung speaks of. Work, think, walk, read, write, endure, resist, communicate, and create – and do all these things in seclusion! A new world we have not previously been aware of may be approaching in this way.
- About the Author
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Kim Hongjung
After graduating from the Department of Sociology at Seoul National University, Kim Hongjung received his Ph.D. from EHESS in Paris. He is currently a professor in the Department of Sociology at Seoul National University. His major fields are social theory and cultural sociology. He served as an editor of the quarterly Social Criticism and Munhak Dongnae. His books include Sociology of the Mind and Sociological Undream-Ability.