South Korean historian Jie-Hyun Lim, raised under an anticommunist
dictatorship, turned to Marxian thought to explain his country's
development, even as he came to struggle with its Eurocentrism. As a
transnational scholar working in postcommunist Poland, Lim recognized
striking similarities between Korean and Polish history and politics.
One realization stood out: Both Korea and Poland-at once the "West" for
Asia yet "Eastern" Europe-had been assigned the role of "East."
This book explores entangled Easts to reconsider global history from the
margins. Examining the politics of history and memory, Lim reveals the
affinities linking Eastern Europe and East Asia. He draws out
commonalities in their experiences of modernity, in their transitions
from dictatorship to democracy, and in the shaping of collective memory.
Ranging across Poland, Germany, Israel, Japan, and Korea, Lim traces the
global history of how notions of victimhood have become central to
nationalism. He criticizes mass dictatorships of right and left in the
Global Easts, considering Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt's notion of sovereign
dictatorship and the concept of decisionist democracy. Lim argues that
nationalism is inherently transnational, critiquing how the nationalist
imagination of the Global East has influenced countries across borders.
Theoretically sophisticated and conceptually innovative, this book sheds
new light on the transnational complexity of historical memory and
imagination, the boundaries between democracy and mass dictatorship, and
the fluidity of East and West.
