The Art of Losing (In) the International
| Author | Shine Choi |
| Published date | 01 January 2017 |
| Date | 01 January 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829816684260 |
| Subject Matter | Forum: The Aesthetic Turn at 15 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829816684260
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2017, Vol. 45(2) 241 –248
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829816684260
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1. By ‘decentering’ I have in mind not only Nayak and Selbin’s book, Decentering International
Relations, but also feminist, postcolonial, decolonial, queer and other critical/creative IR
scholarship. Meghana Nayak and Eric Selbin, Decentering International Relations (Lanham:
Zed Books, 2010); Branwen Gruffydd Jones, ed. Decolonizing International Relations
(New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006); Anna M. Agathangelou and L. H. M. Ling,
Transforming World Politics: From Empire to Multiple Worlds (London and New York:
Routledge, 2009); Christine Sylvester, Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished
Journey (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Marysia Zalewski,
Feminist International Relations: Exquisite Corpse (Oxon: Routledge, 2013); Cynthia Weber,
Queer International Relations: Sovereignty, Sexuality and the Will to Knowledge (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2016).
2. For recent narratives, see Blaine Harden, Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable
Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West (New York: Penguin Books, 2012); Jang
Jin-sung, Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee – a Look Inside North Korea, trans. Shirley Lee
(New York: 37 Ink/Atria, 2014); Krys Lee, How I Became A North Korean: A Novel (New
York: Penguin Random House, 2016).
The Art of Losing (In) the
International
Shine Choi
Massey University, New Zealand
Keywords
aesthetics, art, North Korea, juche
North Korea is an illustrative limit case for exploring contributions of an aesthetic
approach to ‘decentering’ IR and taking seriously non-Western subject positions and
agencies.1 North Korea is an international problem of human rights, poverty and secu-
rity that sits across an enemy line, a line where empathy ends and the terrible begins.
There are good reasons to condemn, hate and close down our ability to imagine subject
positions – the source of life – across this enemy line. Here we can point to its notorious
labour reeducation camps and frequent political purges and executions.2 Taking North
Corresponding author:
Shine Choi, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, Private Bag 102904, Auckland
0745, New Zealand.
Email: S.Choi1@massey.ac.nz
684260MIL0010.1177/0305829816684260Millennium: Journal of International StudiesChoi
research-article2017
Forum: The Aesthetic Turn at 15
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