"Both for those who want a more accurate picture of what took place in Kwangju in May of 1980, and those who want to understand how events can assume a role in history independent of the memories of those who experienced them, will find Laying Claim to the Memory of May a book well worth reading." --Pacific Affairs 76 (2003)

"Lewis's own cool-headed analytic style--brought to flower with the distance of time--and her occasional dry wit offer a solid and engaging multi-layered perspective on 'What really happened in Kwangju?' and how its signification has shifted over the intervening two decades.... Laying Claim to the Memory of May poses the troubling possibility that the theoretical appetites and literary aspirations of contemporary anthropology are at cross-purposes with the writing strategies of a public anthropologist." --Asian Anthropology 2 (2003)

The Kwangju Uprising--"Korea's Tiananmen"--is one of the most important political events in late twentieth-century Korean history. What began as a peaceful demonstration against the imposition of military rule in the southwestern city of Kwangju in May 1980 turned into a bloody people's revolt. In the two decades since, memories of the Kwangju Uprising have lived on, assuming symbolic importance in the Korean democracy movement, underlying the rise in anti-American sentiment in South Korea, and shaping the nation's transition to a civil society. Nonetheless it remains a contested event, the subject still of controversy, confusion, international debate, and competing claims.

As one of the few Western eyewitnesses to the Uprising, Linda Lewis is uniquely positioned to write about the event. In this innovative work on commemoration politics, social representation, and memory, Lewis draws on her fieldwork notes from May 1980, writings from the 1980s, and ethnographic research she conducted in the late 1990s on the memorialization of Kwangju and its relationship to changes in the national political culture. Throughout, the chronological organization of the text is crisscrossed with commentary that provocatively disrupts the narrative flow and engages the reader in the reflexive process of remembering Kwangju over two decades. Highly original in its method and approach, Laying Claim to the Memory of May situates this seminal event in a broad historical and scholarly context. The result is not only the definitive history of the Kwangju Uprising, but also a sweeping overview of Korean studies over the last few decades.

Linda S. Lewis is associate professor of anthropology and director of the East Asian Studies Program at Wittenberg University.

Read the introduction (PDF).

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