• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.48
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• pp.361-389
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• 2017

This essay examines 'precarity politics' by Judith Butler, a well-known gender theorist and queer philosopher, in Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015) focused on concepts as unchosen cohabitation of Hannah Arendt and unwilled proximity of Emmanuel Levinas. Butler's precarity politics is the condition of our dispossessed political beings with fundamental vulnerability and interdependency that cannot choose with whom we will live on this Earth. Butler's political ethics is twofold: on one hand, she examines significance of 'action'' the most significant vita activa in the public area, and 'plurality'' the condition-not only the necessary condition but the possible condition-for a political life suggested by Hannah Arendt in Human Condition; on the other hand, Butler reflects upon global precarity based on a diasporic precarious life in the social world towards freedom and equality. Unchosen cohabitation of plural humans on Earth, and global pervasion of precarity, that indicates "politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death," so called "differential distribution of precariousness," are practical possibilities of ethical and equal cohabitation of different ethnic groups in the social world. Ethical obligations or ethical demand to respond to others' suffering in distance and proximity originated from precarity politics, mentioned in Precarious Life, Parting Ways, and Frames of War, could be non-foundational joint of plural people living together globally. We should presume the 'reversibility' of distance and proximity in others' suffering, based on responsiveness and responsibility of others, if we want to stay attuned to the pain of others we never chose to live together. That is the significance of Butler's 'precarity politics' with 'ethical obligation' to accept 'unchosen plurality' of living population on Earth, and 'reversibility between of distance and proximity,' in her 'new plural and embodied body politics' or 'new corporeal ontology', through human primary vulnerability, fundamental interdependency, being exposed and responsive to suffering of others.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.79
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• pp.226-259
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• 2016

Drawing on the autonomist Marxist concepts of 'social factory', 'immaterial labour', and 'precarity', this paper discusses the changed nature of labour, life and social relations in contemporary informational capitalism. More specifically, it first traces back to the early autonomist (operasimo) theories of 'social factory' and 'class composition' and then discusses how these earlier theories were developed into the concept of 'immaterial labour' by a group of later autonomist theorists such as Paolo Virno, Maurizio Lazzarato, Micheal Hardt, and Antonio Negri. Then, it reviews how the concept of immaterial labour was taken up to understand the nature of labour in digital economy within the tradition of Cultural Studies, closely intersecting with the critiques of 'creative labour'. Finally, it discusses how the changed nature of labour is interrelated with the neoliberal labour forces transformations such as casualization of employment and increasing insecurity in employment and life, which the autonomist explores with the concept of 'precarity', the material condition of immaterial labour.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.337-352
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• 2019

This study aims to explore the characteristics of the working conditions in Korean game industry, focusing on the precarity of game workers. As a research methodology, qualitative and quantitative methods were combined. Specifically, in addition to in-depth interviews with game workers, we conducted a quantitative analysis on adequacy of reward and career prospects recognized by game workers through the Korean Working Conditions Survey(2014/2017). The major findings are as follows. First, game workers were experiencing labor precarity in a way of job insecurity, economic instability and excessive exploitation, as well as loss of autonomy and labor alienation. Second, between 2014 and 2017, the adequacy of reward recognized by game workers was positively improved for companies with 30 or more employees, but was worsen for those with less than 30 employees. In addition, in terms of career prospects, there were no significant changes in the workers of companies with 30 or more employees, but the were worsened for companies with less than 30 employees. These results show that labor precarity in the game industry appears to be different depending on various factors, such as business size, occupation, and career. It also implies that the polarized and inequal structure of the Korean game industry is gradually deepening.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.66
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• pp.211-241
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• 2014

In the era of neoliberalism with high rate of youth unemployment, young college students are forced to believe that the only way to enter the job market is by accepting and participating temporary off-campus apprenticeship, which often disguised as an internship for the creative culture and knowledge. This article discusses that the mode of off-campus apprenticeship, which is supposed to voluntary and participatory, bears in fact a strong resemblance with digital labor. Based on a series of in-depth interviews with college students, this study argues that the apprentice-typed labor denotes a process by which immaterial labor or free labor coincides with self-directed job training. Throughout the digital labor processes young college students are in a constant oscillation between precarity and hope, negotiating their autonomy and social conditions in the neoliberal work environment. The digital labor accumulates students' knowledge and information as a form of commodity, which in turn supports communicative capitalism.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.57
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• pp.33-48
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• 2012

Over the last decades, the issue of work or labor has played a critical role in prevailing discourses to represent the changed economic reality. Aesthetic labor, cultural work, network labor, team-work and alike, have played a dazzling role to represent the emerging economic order, employing the word of labor. Certainly, it is not less than a part of a wide range of shifts in order to make capital work with more effect by making up a workable and governable subject. In this article, I try to examine shifts around the media work which has contributed to expand the new discourse of 'labor.' I will say that it is quite crucial for accounting for the reality of media work to shed light on moves to represent media work, and, among others, one to transform the subjectivity involved in it among others. Furthermore, it would be necessary to take a close look at the subjectivity of media work and its modification to deal with and eliminate the precariousness of media work. Saying about media work without paying any attention to heterogenous and various practices to compose a media work, one is forced to regard media work as the matter of economic and legal interests. In addition, it would bring about that the cultural political concerns of media work will be detached from critical sight of the media cultural studies. Referring to major studies around media work in critical media studies, cultural studies and political economy of communication, this article will briefly look into the arrangement of contentions around subjectivity of media work in South Korea. And it will try to suggest what cultural-political strategy we need to investigate, fighting against the hegemonic power to generate and regulate media work and its workers in precarious conditions. It does not intend to search the media work and its complicated realities in detail in South Korea. I wish that it would make a preliminary step to propose and elaborate the critical analysis of media work and its form of subjectivities.