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Showing papers in "Inter-asia Cultural Studies in 2005"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the interface of tolerance and reticence as a dominant aesthetic-ethical value with the maintaining of proper sexual relations and the keeping of deviant sex(ualities) in the realm of ghosts and wangliang is discussed.
Abstract: This is a preliminary rethinking of the interface of tolerance and reticence as a dominant aesthetic‐ethical value with the maintaining of ‘proper’ sexual relations and the keeping of deviant sex(ualities) in the realm of ghosts and wangliang. The paper is a descriptive analysis of certain effects of homophobia as the latter is re‐figured through ‘silent words and reticent tolerance’, passing for the most ‘traditional’ of virtues in modern ‘democratic’ guise. We think that just as person‐hood is in Taiwan (and perhaps in other Chinese‐ness marked worlds) inextricably entangled with paternalist familial relations in impure modern forms, so too have the rhetoric and politics of tolerance and reticence retained seemingly old powers while articulating new disciplinary and rhetorical forces, especially in the field of sexuality in and around the family. Contemporary novelistic representation, such as the acclaimed popular novel of ‘queer’ desire, The Unfilial Daughter, may be read as both representing and comp...

66 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper propose a general definition of empire that does not tie it with annexation and occupation of foreign territories and, therefore, is able to capture the new forms of indirect and infor- mal control that have become common in recent decades.
Abstract: I wish to propose a general definition of empire that does not tie it with annexation and occupation of foreign territories and, therefore, is able to capture the new forms of indirect and infor- mal control that have become common in recent decades. The imperial prerogative, I suggest, is the power to declare the colonial exception. Everyone agrees that nuclear proliferation is dangerous and should be stopped. But who decides that India may be allowed to have nuclear weapons, and also Israel, and may be even Pakistan, but not North Korea or Iran? We all know that there are many sources of international terrorism, but who decides that it is not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan but the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq that must be overthrown by force? Those who claim to decide on the exception are indeed arrogating to themselves the imperial prerogative.

60 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines how the Tsunami of 26 December 2005 re-defined some key dimensions of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict and peace processes and argues that the post-tsunami recovery process has been intensely politicized in a context of unresolved ethnic conflict, and an incomplete, stalled peace process.
Abstract: This paper examines how the Tsunami of 26 December 2005 re‐defined some key dimensions of Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict and peace processes It first shows how the contending perspectives on the post‐tsunami recovery strategies had brought back to the centre of Sri Lanka's political debate issues of power sharing, regional autonomy, and national sovereignty It demonstrates that the responses to Tsunami disaster and the advancement of the stalled peace process are closely interwoven and that they cannot be de‐linked It then argues that the post‐tsunami recovery process has been intensely politicized in a context of the unresolved ethnic conflict and an incomplete, stalled peace process The paper argues against the approach of ‘reconstruction from above’ It also shows that the post‐tsunami reconstruction is not about constructing buildings, roads and economic infrastructure, but that it involves rebuilding communities, community lives and livelihoods while enabling nearly a million of people who

58 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the mass killings and arrests, the expropriation of people from their houses and lands, and the elimination of working-class political formations are integral parts of an economic strategy of the New Order.
Abstract: Following an aborted coup attempt in October 1965, the Indonesian military organized what turned out to be one of the most horrifying massacres of the twentieth century. More than half a million people were killed while hundreds of thousands of others were detained for years in prison camps throughout the country. There are two major points that this paper attempts to make. First, that the killings are in fact a case of state violence despite of the efforts to make it look like spontaneous violence. Second, that the killings are crucial to the expansion of capitalism in Indonesia. Using Marx’s concept of ‘primitive accumulation’, it attempts to show that the mass killings and arrests, the expropriation of people from their houses and lands, and the elimination of working‐class political formations, are integral parts of an economic strategy of the New Order.

56 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article explored the significance of this emerging trend of male beauty by observing and analysing the expressions, strategies and intentions of those young men who have taken to aesthetically representing themselves in these ways.
Abstract: Contemporary Japanese society has seen the emergence of aesthetically conscious young men who employ ‘feminine’ aesthetics and strategies as ways of exploring and practising new masculine identities. In this paper, I explore the significance of this emerging trend of male beauty by observing and analysing the expressions, strategies and intentions of those young men who have taken to aesthetically representing themselves in these ways. This cultural trend is often described as the ‘feminization of masculinity,’ echoing the gendered articulation of rising mass culture in terms of the ‘feminization of culture,’ which acknowledges aspects of the commercialization of masculine bodies in Japan of the 1990s onward. While this view successfully links important issues, such as femininity, beauty, and the gendered representation of the self in a broader context of capitalist culture, it does not sufficiently convey a sense of agency in the young men's lively practices of exploring and expressing new masculine valu...

54 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the way in which online Chinese fans of Japanese TV drama have carved out alternative practices in the circulation, production and consumption of Japan TV drama, and reveal that online Chinese fan clubs, the websites for downloads, pirated VCD markets, digital file conversion, and private VCD burning, all of these have linked endless networks for the digitalized circulation and consumption.
Abstract: Focusing on the online Chinese fans of Japanese TV drama, this paper explores the way in which the fan subculture, in connection with digital technologies, has carved out alternative practices in the circulation, production and consumption of Japanese TV drama. As ‘minority audiences’ who are not targeted as the objects of capitalist interests, online Chinese fans invent spaces for Chinese transnational networking with self‐help and sharing, as a way of resisting the aloofness from marketing strategies of Japanese TV distributors in Asia. This case study reveals that the online Chinese fan clubs, the websites for downloads, pirated VCD markets, digital file conversion, and private VCD burning – all of these have linked endless networks for the digitalized circulation and consumption of Japanese TV drama. The online Chinese fans are guerrilla fighters in the politics of autonomy, network and low‐cost digital technology; they are attempting to break down time–space constraints and the official distribution ...

42 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Lee et al. as discussed by the authors examined Korea's politics of identity in the form of Asianism in the modern period, especially since Korea's incorporation into the modern world system in the late nineteenth century.
Abstract: This article examines Korea’s politics of identity in the form of Asianism in the modern period, especially since Korea’s incorporation into the modern world system in the late nineteenth century. Asianism, and regionalism generally, has become a salient policy strategy for the current South Korean government. However, Asianism has been a primary ideological current in modern Korea whose most recent incarnation should be understood in the larger historical context. This study traces the development of Asianism in four different periods: precolonial, colonial, Cold War, and post‐Cold War. Initially emerging as a bulwark against Western encroachment, the Asianism narrative became irrelevant upon Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 and only survived as a discourse about a glorified cultural past during colonial rule. Upon liberation, Asianism rescinded as the Japan‐centered regional order was replaced by a new Cold War alignment, capitalist (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) versus communist (China a...

39 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the end of the Cold War and the attendant globalization of capital call for a reconfiguration of areas, including the Pacific, which played a significant part in the ideological formation of globalization.
Abstract: This article argues that the end of the Cold War and the attendant globalization of capital call for a reconfiguration of areas, including the Pacific, has played a significant part in the ideological formation of globalization. The resultant formation is ‘global modernity’, representing at once the globalization and the fragmentation of capitalist modernity. The article discusses five intellectual responses to this situation in studies of Asia and the Pacific that propose new configurations to substitute for earlier area studies: civilizations, oceans, diasporas, Asianization of Asia studies, and indigenous studies. It argues that these substitutes themselves are tied in with new formations of power, and should not be taken at face value. Most important is to remain attentive to configurations from the bottom up that are products of struggles against oppression and exploitation.

35 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines new cultural and political movements that have developed outside of traditional leftist politics since the early 1990s in Japan, including Dame-ren, the Cardboard House Art movements in Shinjuku and recent anti-war protests on the Iraqi war.
Abstract: This paper examines new cultural and political movements that have developed outside of traditional leftist politics since the early 1990s in Japan. The new movements, including Dame‐ren, the Cardboard House Art movements in Shinjuku and recent anti‐war protests on the Iraqi war, were mainly led by young people, in particular, the freeter generation, who did not experience the leftist politics of the 1960s. These movements are different from traditional Marxist political ones and even from the new social movements in the 1960s and 1970s in the sense that they incorporate more cultural practices such as art, music, dance and performance into their political activities. The paper also explores the historical background against which the new movements were born and have developed since the end of the Bubble economy. It sees freeters, young part‐time workers, as emerging, new political actors that have appeared through the transition of a mode of production from Fordism to post‐Fordism. The transformation of ...

31 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that the comparative approach to the study of modern cultural forms should be founded on the common experience but divergent histories of the development of a capitalist mode of production and the impact of its reformatting dynamics on social, including cultural, relations.
Abstract: The paper argues that the comparative approach to the study of modern cultural forms should be founded on the common experience but divergent histories of the development of a capitalist mode of production and the impact of its reformatting dynamics on social, including cultural, relations. The paper then goes on to explore and propose a number of probably inevitable theoretical frameworks and tools to implement a comparative approach to the study of a thoroughly industrialized cultural form, such as cinema and films.

28 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argued that two conflicting discourses of internationalism stood in uneasy counterpoint and contention in the Asian arena of the 1950s, reflected in the legacies of the Bandung conference.
Abstract: This paper argues that two conflicting discourses of internationalism stood in uneasy counterpoint and contention in the Asian arena of the 1950s, reflected in the legacies of the Bandung conference. The first drew on a language of global citizenship and rights. The second saw the international system as a source of strength and support for state sovereignty, and state‐directed programmes of national development. The remainder of the paper uses the case of late‐colonial Singapore to examine the intersection of these two discourses of internationalism. An Asian internationalism, which spanned to include Africa over the course of the 1950s, became one of a stock of narratives that made Singapore’s ‘everyday cosmopolitanism’ possible, in the worlds of the hawkers, the dockworkers and the agriculturalists. The political aspirations of these groups were sacrificed, ultimately, to the goal of disciplined national development, supported by an international order that had closed in to defend the interest...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors read the politics of popular religion in Thailand through the case studies of magic monks and spirit mediums, which have been traditional key actors in the popular religious domain and have maintained their lasting popularity in Thailand in the 1990s and 2000s.
Abstract: In this article, I read the politics of popular religion in Thailand through the case studies of magic monks and spirit mediums, which have been traditional key actors in the popular religious domain and have maintained their lasting popularity in the country in the 1990s and 2000s. Positioning my argument in the context of the much‐criticized commercialization of Buddhism, I accentuate that magic monkhood and spirit mediumship have exhibited themselves as culturally defined channels of, and strategies for, individuals' religious self‐empowerment. In the politics of negotiating and contesting for their religious identities and selfhood, the continued popularity of magic monk and spirit medium has exposed the conventional practices and ideologies of class and gender relations, which apparently favour men over women and, thus, countered attempts by ordinary disciples and followers to move out of their socially marginalized positions in both religious and socioeconomic worlds. In other words, the politics of...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the emerging people's media in relation to the development of communication rights in Indonesia and the Philippines, focusing on how the Indonesian and Philippine press acquiesced to political and economic control by the governments of the dictatorial regime of President Soeharta and President Marcos.
Abstract: This article attempts to investigate the emerging people's media in relation to the development of communication rights in Indonesia and the Philippines. The thrust is to focus on how the Indonesian and Philippine press acquiesced to political and economic control by the governments of the dictatorial regime of President Soeharta and President Marcos. On the other contrary, we look at how people felt that communication rights are their basic rights and that freedom of thought and freedom of speech are essential for democratic rule. Their resistant to violence, imprisonment and murder carried out by state functionaries have brought new forms of media. These are people's media or radical and citizen media which empower as well as transform ‘passive citizens’ into ‘political actors’.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines some of the questions that could emerge from the relationship between Law and Cinema and argues that for a fruitful enquiry to emerge, we would need to have an understanding of the complex relationship between the spatial implication of cinema, practices of groups like fan clubs, the question of changing technologies of cinema and how they relate to issues of citizenship and modernity.
Abstract: This paper examines some of the questions that could emerge from the relationship between Law and Cinema. While there has been some scholarship on law and cinema, most of it has largely focused on the formal properties of film, and not moved beyond the question of representation. This paper argues that for a fruitful enquiry to emerge, we would need to have an understanding of the complex relationship between the spatial implication of cinema, practices of groups like fan clubs, the question of changing technologies of cinema and how they relate to issues of citizenship and modernity. Finally, it argues for a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon of non‐legal media circulation or piracy in the contemporary and links this to the question of citizenship and globalization.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The 1955 Bandung Conference as discussed by the authors was a crucial moment in the history of the former colonial states of Asia and Africa, and the Bandung Spirit that came out of it was a strategic foundation for building solidarity and cooperation among nations.
Abstract: The 1955 Bandung Conference was a crucial moment in the history of the former colonial states of Asia and Africa. The Bandung Spirit that came out of it was a strategic foundation for building solidarity and cooperation among nations. The Cold War period and its aftermath, however, indicate that the Bandung spirit was in decline. Meanwhile, the United States, which had intended to unilaterally disrupt the Bandung Conference, continues to conduct unilateral actions in pursuit of its hegemonic interests. Along this line, the United Nations has often been bypassed by the US and other powerful nations in their unilateral initiatives. In response to this situation, it is important to rekindle the Bandung Spirit and to struggle for the democratization of international relations. In today’s context the struggle should be focused on three areas, namely the democratization of world politics, world economy, and the United Nations.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue for a conjunctural understanding of the contemporary where various events and moments in history are replayed through narrativization and popular memory, and foreground the various notions of masculinity that construct and structure it in relation to notions of female sexuality and changing structures of family.
Abstract: The paper attempts to work out the link between the structuring of the public domain and hegemonic masculinities in contemporary Kerala, South India. Using the debates around an incident of sexual harassment that happened in 1999, it argues for a conjunctural understanding of the contemporary where various events and moments in history are replayed through narrativization and popular memory. The paper goes on to analyse the debates around the incident that produce a ‘narrative public domain’, to foreground the various notions of masculinity that construct and structure it in relation to notions of female sexuality and changing structures of family. These notions of masculinity could be, the paper argues, a starting point for a historical inquiry into Kerala's modernity – an inquiry that would throw light on the past and the ways in which the contemporary is produced through its historical legacies.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyzed the nature and impact of informal border trade between India and Bangladesh and highlighted the sources of security and insecurity through the process of cross-border informal trade.
Abstract: Cross‐border informal trade is one of the most important issues between India and Bangladesh. It takes place between people who live a short distance apart, but who find themselves separated by an international boundary. The people of international border areas believe that cross‐border informal trade is a process to maintain a sustainable livelihood because it provides a livelihood to the unemployed. This research has analysed the nature and impact of informal border trade between India and Bangladesh. It has highlighted the sources of security and insecurity through the process of informal border trade. It also analyses the different socio‐economic conditions of informal border trade in border trade prone areas. This research argues that although informal border trade is considered illegal, it is necessary for the maintenance of the livelihood for the poor in the bordering areas. The state failures in fulfilling the needs of the poor force them to involve themselves in informal border trade.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the author offers an experience of how the author comes to understand the terms "Third World" in a specific social, historical, and political context in Taiwan, and his deepest understandings of the 'Third World' did not come from theoretical readings, but from several concrete personal experiences.
Abstract: This essay offers an experience of how the author comes to understand the terms ‘Third World’ in a specific social, historical, and political context in Taiwan. For the author, his deepest understandings of the ‘Third World’ did not come from theoretical readings, but from several concrete personal experiences.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the political aspects of the postwar trials of the Chinese collaborators and their arguments, at the trials, against the charges of treason, and argue that Chinese collaborators had a different version of nationalism, which emphasized the different roles and functions of the state during the anti-Japanese war, and that wartime collaboration was, in part, a product of their reflections on the Guomindang history and its political culture since 1927.
Abstract: This paper examines the political aspects of the postwar trials of the Chinese collaborators and their arguments, at the trials, against the charges of treason. Against the dominant scholarship on their collaboration with Japan, it argues that the Chinese collaborators had a different version of nationalism, which emphasized the different roles and functions of the state during the anti‐Japanese war, and that wartime collaboration was, in part, a product of their reflections on the Guomindang’s history and its political culture since 1927. The fates of the major collaborators, as the trial cases of Zhou Fohai and Chen Gongbo show, were determined, this paper argues, not by legal crimes they committed but rather mainly by their former political affiliations in the intraparty politics, which revealed the political character of the trials. The political aspects seemed to serve to disclose further the innate problems and inability of the party and its Nationalist Government, which were the main reasons for it...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The forced migration of Korean children has by now continued for over half a century, resulting in a diaspora of more than a million Korean children as mentioned in this paper, and international adoption from Korea constitutes the background to this study.
Abstract: International adoption from Korea constitutes the background to this study. The forced migration of Korean children has by now continued for over half a century, resulting in a diaspora of more tha ...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the transformation of the idea of South Asia in post-cold war era is discussed, and the authors mainly discuss the transformation in South Asia and its transformation in the post-Cold war era.
Abstract: This paper mainly discusses the transformation of the idea of South Asia in Post‐Cold War era.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors define the Bandung spirit as one of a "nonaligned self-helped "organization against" the dominant powerful countries"; that is, spirit of "anti-predominance".
Abstract: This paper tries to analyze the historical change in the Third World in its emergent stage, in the authoritarian stage and in the current democratic stage and, thereafter, find a way to revive the Bandung spirit in the current globalization context. I define the Bandung spirit as one of a ‘non‐aligned self‐helped “organization against” the dominant powerful countries’; that is, spirit of ‘anti‐predominance’. This spirit has emerged on the base of such domestic orientation and realities as economic self‐reliance, nationally integrated political regime, convergence of the state and civil society around anti‐colonialism. However, according to intensification of the Cold War confrontation on the international level and its centrifugal influence, the early Third World changed to a ‘new’ authoritarian Third World. The Third World in this stage could be characterized by an exclusive authoritarian political regime, dependent‐developmentalist economic orientation and coercively repressed and mobilized, in...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors explored the relationship between culture and state formation, arguing that the former is effectively a field of contestation where struggles over hegemony between various classes and social blocs are played out.
Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between (national) culture and state formation, arguing that the former is effectively a field of contestation where struggles over hegemony between various classes and social blocs are played out Cultural nationalism has been the pre‐eminent form of nationalism in the twentieth century, particularly within the anti‐colonial and postcolonial contexts Since this form of nationalism lends itself to moral regulation by ruling classes in a way that civic or political nationalisms do not (given its ability to produce and manipulate emotional affect) it becomes imperative to understand its relationship to power and to the project/process of state formation This paper uses the case of postcolonial Pakistan as a lens through which to explore and analyse the complexities of this relationship during the early years of the Pakistani nation‐state Using primary material – Constituent Assembly Debates and the texts of important intellectual debates on culture during thi

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Taylor and Francis as discussed by the authors discuss the first state leaders of Asian and African countries, having regained their political independence, met for the first time in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955.
Abstract: Taylor and Francis Ltd RIAC_A_131667.sgm 10.1080/146493 0500316844 Inter-Asia Cultural S udies 464-9373 (pri t)/1469-8447 (online) Original Article 2 05 & Francis 640 000December 2005 emyHerrera 5 rue M u e BerteauxErmont95120France e her e @aol.com Remy Herrera: Fifty years ago, in 1955, the main state leaders of Asian and African countries, having regained their political independence, met for the first time in Bandung. What was their common project?

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors address the pedagogic and disciplinary challenges posed by the effort to understand urban spatial practices and institutional histories in Bombay/Mumbai, and other postcolonial South Asian cities.
Abstract: This paper addresses the pedagogic and disciplinary challenges posed by the effort to understand urban spatial practices and institutional histories in Bombay/Mumbai, and other postcolonial South Asian cities. Many cities in the region, such as Chandigarh and Dhaka were designed as iconic of the abstract space of the nation‐state. The dominance of the nationalist spatial imagination in the understandings of public space, citizenship, and the metropolitan environment – combined with the functionalist perception of architecture and spatial practice – have resulted in an urban pedagogy that regards the city only as a technological or physical artefact. Architectural education and urban pedagogy is therefore unable to address the diversity of social‐spatial formations in the city, and its political regime of predatory development, tactical negotiation, and blurry urbanism. To better understand this new regime, we require a collaborative urbanism that treats the city as an extra‐curricular space by wh...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyse the difficult relationship the postcolonial state shares with a writer whose work deliberately unsettles the issues of minority and of women and/in religion in Bangladesh.
Abstract: This article situates Taslima Nasrin, the controversial writer from Bangladesh, in a particular political and religious moment in the history of Bangladesh, to analyse the difficult relationship the postcolonial state shares with a writer whose work deliberately unsettles the issues of minority and of women and/in religion. The complex mosaic of Nasrin’s work, comprising as varied genres as newspaper columns, poetry and popular novels, has engendered, in the last ten years, unprecedented responses both for and against her writing. This has brought the issue of literature and its uneasy negotiation with state politics to the forefront of national debate. Despised by Islamists and fundamentalists, equally loved and loathed by the reading public, considered with caution by secular intelligentsia and fellow feminists, and ultimately banned by the state, Nasrin is a unique case in point. Her work, written under the gaze of the state defying the fundamentalist fatwa demanding her death, hence invites d...

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Wild Lily student sit-in in 1990 was often praised in the later political transformation process as a crucial moment when the "pure and innocent" students facilitated democratization in Taiwan as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The ‘Wild Lily’ student sit‐in in March 1990 was often praised in the later political transformation process as a crucial moment when the ‘pure and innocent’ students facilitated democratization in Taiwan. From the perspective of a participant in the protest, the author argues that the sit‐in was actually a failure of the ‘popular democratic’ wing of Taiwan's student movement in the 1980s, which championed a more radical vision of democracy. The idea of ‘popular democracy’ was an anti‐elitist ideology arising from critiques on the elite‐led political reform movement. However, due to its historical constraint, practices along this line were unable to alter the bourgeois democratic character of 1980s' democratization process in Taiwan.


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The success of Kung Fu Hustle within and beyond Hong Kong provides a convenient starting point for a discussion of actor-director Stephen Chow's films and the manner in which they present themselves as belonging to a particular local context.
Abstract: The success of Kung Fu Hustle within and beyond Hong Kong provides a convenient starting point for a discussion of actor‐director Stephen Chow's films and the manner in which they present themselves as belonging to a particular ‘local’ context The production of the local is a critical issue in south Indian cinemas, where the local has been named as the linguistic‐cultural identity and became available for political mobilization Chow's work has significant implications for the study of south Indian cinemas because the dissimilarities between the two facilitate the identification of similar cinematic techniques used by both

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explain the relationship between Japan and its neighboring countries, and the influence of Japanese neo-nationalism on the idea of an East Asian community, and explain the role of Japan in this process.
Abstract: The paper explains the relationship between Japan and its neighboring countries, and the influence of Japanese neo‐nationalism on the idea of an East Asian community.