¡®???¡¯ ??? ???: ¡®????¡¯? ?? ¡®???¡¯?? ???? (Ego-history of a ¡®Western Historian¡¯ in the Postcolonial Korea -Shifting from ¡®Western history¡¯ to history per se-)

This paper problematizes the ¡®Western history¡¯ as a disciplinary field by scrutinizing the tri-partite structure of history research and education in the postcolonial Korea. Western history as a discipline carries the multi-layered transnationality of the modern historiography on a global scale. The global trajectory of the modern historiography shows that ¡®Western history¡¯ is a conspicuous co-product of Euro-centrism, Self-Orientalism, Japanese Orientalism, the bifurcation of the Universal and the Particular, discursive struggle for the national recognition and Marxist historicism. ¡®Western history¡¯ in East Asia represents the hegemonic mirror onto which national histories in Japan and Korea reflect their own historical peculiarities. That explains why ¡®Western history¡¯ has worked as a nationalist rationale. In this paper the disciplinary history of ¡®Western history¡¯ will be interwoven with the ego-history of myself who had started one¡¯s academic career as a ¡®Western historian¡¯ and grew to a transnational/global historian. Once put in the intellectual interaction on a global scale, the ego-history of a Western historian leaving traces in the postcolonial Korea, post-communist Poland and transnational problem space would contribute to unlearning ¡®Western history¡¯ per se.

This paper problematizes the ¡®Western history¡¯ as a disciplinary field by scrutinizing the tri-partite structure of history research and education in the postcolonial Korea. Western history as a discipline carries the multi-layered transnationality of the modern historiography on a global scale. The global trajectory of the modern historiography shows that ¡®Western history¡¯ is a conspicuous co-product of Euro-centrism, Self-Orientalism, Japanese Orientalism, the bifurcation of the Universal and the Particular, discursive struggle for the national recognition and Marxist historicism. ¡®Western history¡¯ in East Asia represents the hegemonic mirror onto which national histories in Japan and Korea reflect their own historical peculiarities. That explains why ¡®Western history¡¯ has worked as a nationalist rationale. In this paper the disciplinary history of ¡®Western history¡¯ will be interwoven with the ego-history of myself who had started one¡¯s academic career as a ¡®Western historian¡¯ and grew to a transnational/global historian. Once put in the intellectual interaction on a global scale, the ego-history of a Western historian leaving traces in the postcolonial Korea, post-communist Poland and transnational problem space would contribute to unlearning ¡®Western history¡¯ per se.