Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization

Citation

Ribut Wahyudi (2014), "Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization", Asian Education and Development Studies, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 181-183. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEDS-01-2014-0003

This book discusses the current politics and economics of Taiwan under the shade of the USA, Japan and China from critical cultural studies perspectives. To get a deep and broad understanding of it, the analysis is not only centred on Taiwan and its relations with the USA, Japan and China but also its link to South East Asia (Singapore) and the comparison to South Korea. In so doing, the author, Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010), multiplies points of references of analysis employing geocolonial historical materialism. This approach enables the thorough analysis of the current position of Taiwan by considering its historical relations with China. The status of Taiwan as a former colony of Japan as well as a US protectorate after the defeat of Japan by the USA in the Second World War presents the dilemma of Taiwan in terms of unification with China or becoming one of the territories of the USA. What makes the story more interesting is the fact that Taiwan, with its southward advance policy under Lee Theng Hui (Taiwanese born and educated in the USA), has become the sub-imperialist country of South East Asia.

The term “sub-imperialist country” has resulted from Taiwan ' s experience of having been a Japanese colony and a US protectorate as well as Taiwan ' s current policy under the pressure of mainland China. As noted in the history that ‘the defeat of the KMT party in the hands of the CCP’ (p. 55) in the Chinese civil war, required KMT to move its government to Taiwan and run a project called “internal colonization” (p. 55). Being sub-imperialist in South East Asia, Taiwan has expanded its business trade to include Singapore, a strategy known as “The Discourse of the Southward Advance” (p. 17). This strategy, as Chen argues, is the result of the absence of reflexive thought about the discourse (p. 37) proposed by Wu Micha, a leading expert of Taiwan history, which leads to “Taiwan centrism’ as ‘the incarnation of imperialism” (p. 35).

The absence of imperialist cultural imagery which leads to Taiwan ' s incarnation of imperialism might mean that Taiwan, in some respects, has gone beyond the ‘suffering’ experience from Japanese colonization and the Han Chinese colonization during the Ming and Qing dynasties (p. 20) in the early of the twentieth century. This condition might underline Said ' s interpretive direction which claims that the “imperialist cultural imagery” shapes the “vision and horizon of the colonized” (p. 25). Furthermore, the book also discusses the underlying theories prior to the proposal of Asia as Method. Those theories are: colonial identification, critical syncretism and geocolonial historical materialism.

With regard to colonial identification, Chen discusses the fact that the colonizer develops a psychology of colonization aimed at controlling the colony under the guise of “civilizing” the colonized country. Danaher et al. (2000) explain that the “civilizing” project seeks moral justification for colonization in order not to be seen as aggression; rather, it is projected to bring “the light of civilization to the dark and barbarous parts of the world” (p. 110). Furthermore, in explaining colonization, Chen uses the “psychoanalysis of decolonization” as expressed in Frantz Fanon ' s book Black Skin, White Masks – in which the colonized (black) wants to be the colonizer (white). Acting as a psychoanalyst, Fanon tried to help the colonized people to realize their unconsciousness and stop the hallucination of being white, which he thought was useless. Another interesting idea comes from Ashis Nandi labelled as “second colonialization”. This idea refers to the fact that even if the colonial country has left the colonized country, the colonization still takes place as the new form of colonization has shifted from the temporal and geographical category to the psychological category, “relying on the superior imaginary of the hegemonic West”. Hall (1996) argues that this psychological category relates to the current post-colonial condition, that is, how colonization is “inscribed deeply within them in the colonised cultures” (p. 246), an indication that today ' s post-colonial critiques are still relevant.

As for critical syncretism, it is “the cultural strategy of identification of the subaltern subject groups” (p. 99). This strategy covers critical identity politics and the articulating agents. In this regard, the colonized country needs to diversify the objects of identification and establish critical connections across cultures so that the country can go beyond the binary politics of imperialism and colonization while learning from other colonized countries how they struggle and recover from colonization so as to be able to position themselves appropriately among regional and global powers.

Geocolonial historical materialism, the approach on which this book is based, indicates the need to shift the points of references for knowledge from Europe and the USA to East Asia, South Asia (India) and China. It provides a way to learn from the colonial experience of India, for example: Chatterjee ' s critical understanding of civil society within Gandhian tradition considers subaltern groups in democracy and political society, and how they struggle for independence (p. 236). Moreover, geocolonial historical materialism takes a good lesson from China (see China as Method by Mizoguchi Yuzo) in its use of their jiti-based entity for its own historical trajectory. In this trajectory, it is believed that China evolved from old to new China, which differs fundamentally with Europe and Japan.

Chapter 3 (De-Cold War) discusses the replacement of worldwide colonial systems of power to Cold War structure, including the political and military powers from the former Soviet Union to the USA. Chen argues that Cold War structure blocked the critical reflection between the colonizing and the colonized countries. This created “reproduction problems of colonization”. An example of this is the “Japanese Southward- Advance project” (p. 36) in the 1930s, which inspired the Taiwanese “southward-advance worldview’ (p. 59) in the 1990s. Two Taiwanese films, “Dou-San” which is translated as “Borrowed Life”, and “Banana Paradise”, interestingly depict the different ways in which identity is formed. In “Dou-San” the main character uses Japanese values as his point of reference, as he grew up during the Japanese colonial time and thus values the Japanese way of life. “Banana Paradise”, produced in other dynasty, reflects the time when contact between Taiwanese and mainland Chinese people was possible. This film shows how two ethnic groups, both of whom happen to be economically challenged, unite in solidarity to oppose the violence of state power (p. 141).

In Chapter 4 (De-Imperialization), Americanism, both in terms of values and ideologies, is described as being influential in Taiwanese businessmen and intellectuals who group themselves in Reading Club 51. The great number of Taiwanese students in American universities and the number of US government offices in Taiwan might just be the reason for such Americanism. This Reading Club 51 group argues for Taiwan to become the 51st state of the USA as a formal rejection of any proposal for Taiwan ' s reunification with China. This confirms that American identity has become a part of Taiwan ' s identity, which Chen argues is the result of US cultural imperialism after the Second World War. Seeing this “new form of imperialism” of the USA, Chen urges us to bring this issue into the centre of debate within the current post-colonial cultural studies by recognizing the exercising of power of imperialism, not only from outside but also from “within”.

Chapter 5, (Asia as Method) is “an open ended imagination” to create a new world, the Asian countries such as “China, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia or Seoul, Taipei and Bangalore or the third world” (p. 254) as a frame of references. Furthermore, it aims to learn also from colonialism and imperialism either in physical, economic, academic or cultural form, with no intention of becoming new imperialist or sub-imperialist.

Being diverse in its points of reference, Asia as Method also synergizes with the “Southern theory” in sociology as proposed by Connell (2007). This theory advocates the need to have many knowledgeable voices in the context of global sociology, for example, sociology which captures: the Islamic debate regarding modernity; African discussion of indigenous knowledge; the theory of autonomy, dependence and globalization in Latin America; international feminist critique of metropolitan hegemony; and the Indian debate on “culture, voice and development” (p. 262). The book contributes to our understanding of “a need for greater crossing of boundaries, for greater interventionism in cross disciplinary activity, a concentrated awareness of situation – political, methodological, social, historical – in which intellectual and cultural work is carried out” (Said, 1985, p. 107) – the work that Asian education systems should do for their own critical and dialogical knowledge production.