Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization: Towards Deimperialization - Softcover

Chen, Kuan-Hsing

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822346761 ISBN 13: 9780822346760

Verlag: Duke University Press, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Centering his analysis in the dynamic forces of modern East Asian history, Kuan-Hsing Chen recasts cultural studies as a politically urgent global endeavor. He argues that the intellectual and subjective work of decolonization begun across East Asia after the Second World War was stalled by the cold war. At the same time, the work of deimperialization became impossible to imagine in imperial centers such as Japan and the United States. Chen contends that it is now necessary to resume those tasks, and that decolonization, deimperialization, and an intellectual undoing of the cold war must proceed simultaneously. Combining postcolonial studies, globalization studies, and the emerging field of “Asian studies in Asia,” he insists that those on both sides of the imperial divide must assess the conduct, motives, and consequences of imperial histories.

Chen is one of the most important intellectuals working in East Asia today; his writing has been influential in Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and mainland China for the past fifteen years. As a founding member of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society and its journal, he has helped to initiate change in the dynamics and intellectual orientation of the region, building a network that has facilitated inter-Asian connections. Asia as Method encapsulates Chen’s vision and activities within the increasingly “inter-referencing” East Asian intellectual community and charts necessary new directions for cultural studies.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kuan-Hsing Chen is a professor in the Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies at Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. He has written and edited many books in Chinese. He is co-executive editor of the journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.

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"Kuan-Hsing Chen has attempted something both familiar and unusual. His book takes the old slogan of decolonization seriously and evaluates its achievements in different Asian contexts. But it also calls for continuing efforts against imperialism and the cold war, acknowledging the force of nationalism as an ally but not reposing faith in it. "Asia as Method" signals a new direction in cultural studies."--Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University

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ASIA as METHOD

Toward DeimperializationBy Kuan-Hsing Chen

Duke University Press

Copyright © 2010 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4676-0

Contents

PREFACE..................................................................................................................1INTRODUCTION Globalization and Deimperialization........................................................................17CHAPTER 1 The Imperialist Eye: The Discourse of the southward Advance and the Subimperial Imaginary.....................65CHAPTER 2 Decolonization: A Geocolonial Historical Materialism..........................................................115CHAPTER 3 De-Cold War: The Im/possibility of "Great Reconciliation".....................................................161CHAPTER 4 Deimperialization: Club 51 and the Imperialist Assumption of Democracy........................................211CHAPTER 5 Asia as Method: Overcoming the Present Conditions of Knowledge Production.....................................257EPILOGUE The Imperial Order of Things, or Notes on Han Chinese Racism...................................................269NOTES....................................................................................................................287SPECIALTE RMS............................................................................................................291BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................................305

Chapter One

THE IMPERIALIST EYE

The Discourse of the Southward Advance and the Subimperial Imaginary

I look hard for The origin of my blood. Some say I'm from the Malay archipelago, On the southwest border of China ... But my parents said: We are all children of the sun, The eggs of the snake, The race nurtured by the earth ... No clear answer after all. But retracing assures me, That I now understand (we are) the real master of the beautiful island, And page after page of broken history. MONANEN MALIALIAVES, "BURNING"

In early 1994, the government of Taiwan announced a policy called "moving southward" (nnxing). The policy encouraged Taiwanese companies to invest in Southeast Asia, and it was applauded by business executives, scholars, and politicians as an important counterbalance to the existing overinvestment in mainland China. The opposition party-the Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP-endorsed the policy, which received a flood of enthusiastic responses in the media. The few dissenting voices noted the unsatisfactory investment conditions in Southeast Asian countries: political instability, backward infrastructures, inefficient government administration, skyrocketing real-estate prices, and rising salaries. The arguments of both sides, however, were framed by the same narrative, which effectively silenced critical reflection on the underlying structure of the southward advance. Not a single voice was raised to challenge the fact that advancing toward the South (or the West or the North, for that matter) was a projection of the same expansionist ambitions that we recognize from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A Taiwanese imperial desire was being formed.

To be more precise, an inchoate Ideological desire for a Taiwanese subempire was emerging out of this project initiated by the state. Under the neocolonial structure, Taiwan's economy, international politics, and culture have been subordinated to those of the United States and Japan. As a result, Taiwan's targets for expansion were not in the more solidly established capitalist zones, already also dominated by the United States and Japan, but in less politically and economically advantaged areas, where Taiwan's economic interests could be exploited with less competition. I use the word "subempire" to refer to a lower-level empire that is dependent on an empire at a higher level in the imperialist hierarchy. Neocolonial imperialism here refers to a form of structural domination in which a country with more global power uses political and economic interventions in other countries to influence policy and exercise control over markets. Unlike the earlier colonial imperialism, which depended on invasion, occupation, and usurpation of sovereignty to further economic interests, neocolonial imperialism uses military force as a support mechanism and employs it only as a last resort. The history of the third world has proven that many colonies have won independence only to become subcolonies, falling prey to their former colonizers once again because of their economic, cultural, and political dependency on the new imperial (formerly colonial) power. The stratified hierarchical construction of neocolonial imperialism is the present phase of global capitalism.

Taiwanese subimperial practices began in the 1980s with westward (toward mainland China) and southward (toward Southeast Asia) flows of capital, but these were mostly uncoordinated investments made by small- and medium-size businesses seeking access to cheap labor. Not until the creation of state-led expansionist projects-such as Taiwan's "fourth" Export Processing Zone in the Philippines, the Taiwan Industrial Area in Vietnam, and the Taiwan Development Project in Indonesia-did Taiwan finally express its true subimperialist nature. The establishment of these physical zones is reminiscent of the classical imperialist practice (itself closely associated with traditional territorial colonialism) of building bases in overseas territories from which to organize exploitative activities. As businesses in Taiwan closed factories there and moved their operations to mainland China and Southeast Asia in the late 1980s, cases of unsafe working conditions and worker abuse began to multiply. In Thailand, workers died in a fire at a Taiwanese-owned toy factory. In the Philippines, women workers went on strike to protest Taiwanese factory owners' militaristic management style and physical abuse. Women in mainland China were subjected to brutal physical mistreatment in the workplace as well as exploitative personal relationships with Taiwanese businessmen. Meanwhile, the flow of capital continued apace. In 1988, Taiwan's investment in Thailand amounted to 10 percent of foreign investment in that country and was second only to Japan's. In 1989,Taiwan's share of foreign investment in Malaysia was 24.7 percent, again second only to Japan's. In 1990, Taiwan's investment in China's Fujian Province amounted to one-third of foreign investment. In the same year, Taiwan's investment in the neighboring Guangdong Province was second only to Japan's. In short, Taiwan's capital expansion was well under way in Southeast Asia and mainland China by the end of the 1980s (Tan 1993, 63, 65). In the context of our analysis, the implication of this is clear. Taiwanese capital was already in Southeast Asia long before 1994, when the government announced its policy of a southward advance. The policy was ideological maneuvering, the result of political anxiety brought about by stronger economic ties with China. Taiwan has sought to influence other countries' trade and diplomatic policies. The government negotiated with Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam to set a ceiling on the number of laborers from those countries allowed to work in Taiwan, and it pressed the government of Indonesia to suppress workers' protests in that country against Taiwanese capital. Interventions like these display the logic of dominance characteristic of neocolonialism....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Duke University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0822346761
• ISBN 13: 9780822346760
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 342
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande