Description
Claims from Western radicals and leftists insisting that China is not a capitalist nation go hand in hand with broader claims that have gained traction since 2008 regarding capitalism itself. It is easy to believe that China isn’t a capitalist nation if capitalism was dealt a mortal blow by the mortgage crisis of 2008 and finally perished during the pandemic.
Alex Taek-Gwang Lee asks readers to think more clearly and reminds them of how the best critic of capitalism, Karl Marx, understood capitalism to be defined by a division of labor, global distribution, and most of all by the production of commodities by a newly emerging laboring class.
In “Made in Nowhere,” Lee argues that, far from being a leading light of socialism, the Chinese state has been capitalism’s savior since 2008. He tackles symptoms of contemporary global capitalism, ranging from critical theories of “supermodernity” and the multitude to cultural products such as Netflix and Squid Game.
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In the book Made in Nowhere, Alex Taek-Gwang Lee examines the modes of existence in Asia through various themes, including Asian capitalism, the political economy of global mobility, viral questioning, zombies and protesters, BTS and nation-states, the desire for Squid Game, the flesh of democracy, Hegel and Netflix, street artists in Delhi, Sartre in Asia, Foucault and Iran, North Korea and the mystery of survival, and even the view if Delft. The author skillfully cites a wide range of theories from Hegel and Marx to Foucault, Deleuze, Žižek, and Byung-Chul Han etc., not only using them to analyze these phenomena, but also negotiating with these theories and developing his own insights through these case studies. Running beneath his theoretical analysis is a contemporary Marxist political economy. He explores the unique development path of capitalism in Asia, explores its relationship with global capitalism, and reveals the impact and internal contradictions of capitalism on modern society through philosophical, historical, and cultural case studies. His observations are sharp and full of insight. This is a brilliant work that will undoubtedly have an impact in multiple fields, including theoretical research, Asian studies, and cultural studies.
— Wang Hui, Professor, Tsinghua University, China
If Alex Taek-Gwang Lee’s Made in Nowhere will not become an instant classic, then the predictions that human intelligence has reached its peak somewhere around 2010 and we are all now gradually getting more stupid is simply true. We have books which provide a good overview of today’s global capitalism; we have books which explain how Asia only become Asia we all know through interaction with Europe; we have numerous analyses of the recent widely popular trends in the Far East popular culture, from TV series to street art and video games. But what Made in Nowhere provides is a unique intermixture of these three levels: how the changed role of Asia offer a key to today’s global capitalism, how the Asian popular culture structures our global ideological network. This is for me intellectual enjoyment at its highest: not only to descend from the universal to the singular but to discover universality at work in what may appear as an idiosyncratic singularity. The choice is thus clear: read this book or drift into all-pervasive imbecility.
— Slavoj Žižek, International Director, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
