Against the Chains of Utility: Antiutilitarian Sacrifice in Cho Sehŭi's A Little Ball Launched by the Dwarf

Abstract:This article looks at Cho Sehŭi's novel A Little Ball Launched by the Dwarf (1978) as the epitome of antiutilitarian literature in the 1970s. During the period, the developmental state invoked the rhetoric of sacrifice to justify its demand on the people and society for devotion and commitment to the state-led economic development. This idea of sacrifice lies at the heart of what this article terms "utilitarian ideology." The utilitarian ideology indicates the set of premises on which the developmental state privileged production over consumption, work over leisure, accumulation over expenditure, and the future over the present. This article highlights a moment of antiutilitarian sacrifice in The Dwarf that defies the instrumental reasoning that lies at the heart of the utilitarian ideology. In doing so, the article does not merely take issue with the state ideology of 1970s South Korea. By drawing from Georges Bataille's thoughts on sacrifice and literature, the article criticizes utilitarian sacrifice, which not only lay at the core of this ideology but continues to pervade today's society. In the end, the article locates a new possibility of literature's relevance to society in the moment of antiutilitarian sacrifice radiating from The Dwarf