Abstract

This dissertation seeks to develop a model of affectivity based on the Hegelian dialectics of identity and uses this model to analyze the historical, economic and political history of North Korea. Drawing on propaganda materials, children’s cartoons and by examining the dynamics of leadership transition over the course of the republic’s history, a synthesis of Butlerian theories of performativity, Marxist political economy and the sociology of emotion allows for a description of nationalist affects levied against the anomic affectivity of commodification. Whereby the dynamics of capitalism, the historical forces of modernization, and the very ontic structure of individual/group identity inculcate an emotional dualism which operates simultaneously at the global, social and individual level.