DARK NUNS AND BRIGHT LIGHTS Korean Shamanism and Adapting to the Capitalist Unconscious

Abstract

This article explores the dynamic interplay between Korean shamanism and capitalism, arguing that the shaman’s (or mudang’s) gut rituals, far from being relics, are very active agents in South Korea’s neoliberal landscape. Drawing on the psychoanalytic framework of Slavoj Žižek, it posits that shamanism externalizes the unconscious drives—desire, trauma, power—fueling capitalism, offering commodified hope while critiquing its disavowals. Rooted in Korea’s animistic theology, the mudang mediates between sacred and profane, her rituals (as with every capitalist service) priced yet resonant with a surplus meaning that resists full market assimilation. This study parallels Korea’s private, market-driven shamanism with state-managed belief systems, highlighting adaptation over resistance. Films like Exhuma and Dark Nuns amplify this, staging shamans as healers of modernity’s fractures—alienation, loss—amid material excess. Historically, shamanism’s survival—from colonial suppression to postwar miracles—reflects Korea’s own reinvention, its entrepreneurial mudang mirroring capitalist ingenuity. As a Žižekian symptom the mudang sustains capitalism’s illusions while exposing its limits, her chants echoing a past that haunts Korea’s future. Globally, this sacred-profane tension invites comparisons—Malaysia’s bomoh, America’s televangelists—suggesting the persistence of the system’s unconscious in tandem with its successes, dooming its subjects to the perils begotten of prosperity.