The Narrative of Double Death with Abject Agency

Abstract

AbstractAbject agency is further theorized in Chapter 2 as central to the ‘double death’ narrative of global cinema. Protagonists undergo sociopolitical abjection as symbolic death and then become agents to recover their subjectivity or fulfill other missions until real death. The chapter’s case study moves the argument from Europe to Asia and highlights South Korean cinema while mapping its two transnational capital networks in narrative space. The North-West network depicts refugees or migrants whose mission renders them enslaved and abandoned like dogs (Poongsan, The Yellow Sea), whereas the South-East network stages professional outlaws like thieves as agents of neoliberal desires (The Thieves, Thirst). These ‘dogs’ and ‘thieves’ represent those circulated by capital and those circulating capital in the age of cognitive, financial, and emotional capitalism, leading to an ethical dilemma of today.