Lives in a Space of Necropolitics, Korean Literature Now/ Summer 2021

SAHA MANSION: LIVES IN A SPACE OF NECROPOLITICS

Intan Paramaditha

Korean Literature Now (vol. 52 Summer 2021)

Saha Mansion is a dystopian story about how places and bodies are regulated in a city-state taken over by corporate power. It asks questions about lives that matter and what survival means in a capitalist regime where stability is maintained through necropolitics.

Necropolitics, as conceptualized by Achille Mbembe, refers to the power to decide how some people may live and how some must die or are allowed to die. Refugee camps, prisons, or slums are places to govern populations that don’t fit into notions of productive bodies. Saha Mansion, the name of a poor housing complex in the novel, is about how precarious lives are located on a map. Who will care about your death when you are disposable?

SAHA MANSION was translated from Korean to bahasa Indonesia by Lingliana Tan and published by Gramedia Pustaka Utama (2021). It has not appeared in English.