As part of the “Zonal Logics of Modernity” workshop, jointly organized by colleagues at The New School and NYU, I spoke about “counter-logics” through the example of Paju Bookcity in South Korea. Our two-day workshop focused on the special economic zone as a socio-cultural space, one we can perhaps better understand through the lenses of the humanities. Some of our key concerns were: whether there’s a particular connection between Asian modernity and the SEZ (given the spatial form’s early arrival and contemporary predominance in Asia); what role aesthetics and materiality play in the marketing and design of the zone; how the zone configures the urban subject and/or citizen; how “zonal logics” impact cultural production; and what epistemologies and ontologies of urbanity are embodied in the zone.
Here are the text and images from my talk.