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The Basis of Public Performance Act ―the Dynamics of Colonial Legacy and the Cold War

  • The Journal of Korean drama and theatre
  • 2021, (73), pp.125-168
  • DOI : 10.17938/tjkdat.2021..73.125
  • Publisher : The Learned Society Of Korean Drama And Theatre
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Other Arts and Kinesiology
  • Received : August 6, 2021
  • Accepted : August 27, 2021
  • Published : September 30, 2021

LEE, SEUNG-HEE 1

1성균관대학교 동아시아학술원

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Public Performance Act is the institutional basis for all conditions and criticalities of performance (art), but the level of understanding about it is not very high. In particular, there is no question about the enactment of Public Performance Act. The colonial law was finally repealed and the new law was enacted as the law of the ‘state’, but the enactment of Public Performance Act deserves to be called an ‘event’ in that the colonial rule formed the legal basis and it was none other than the military government that legislated it. When paying attention to the planning of the legislative subject, the context in which the colonial legacy settles in the laws of the postcolonial state system and constitutes a part of the Cold War culture can be explained from the following three aspects. First, the rapid legislative process of military government power would not have been possible without the internalization of colonial system and the practices that support it. This continuity stems from the fact that the legislative subject takes on the character of a quasi/wartime ‘military government’ power. In this case, ‘law’ means the language of the occupiers for domination, which leads them to believe that the present power is just. Second, the colonial legacy that Public Performance Act inherited is the unification of control based on performativity, control of the performance place, human control, and the censorship system. These were chosen for the purpose of ‘controlling performativity’, which is useful from a public information viewpoint. Third, the special status of administrative legislation. On the one hand, it contributes to composing the jurisprudence of Public Performance Act while filling the void in the law caused by the ghosting of the colonial laws, on the other hand, it was in charge of the formation and execution of new norms required for the Cold War order and the formation of the state system, which was in line with the colonial era. It is necessary to remember the same context that gave birth to Public Performance Act. This is because the military government is the legislative subject that repealed the old laws and created ‘new’ laws and made these laws ‘faith’, and the imagination of this new belief stems from nostalgia for the colonial period. It will be the restoration of the beliefs imagined lost in the eight years of Liberation where the ideology intensified, or the ‘incompetent’ Lee Seung-man government and the ‘disordered’ 4・19 space, and the source of justifying power.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.