Trans-Asia as Method

Theory and Practices

Jeroen de Kloet, Yiu Fai Chow, Gladys Pak Lei Chong

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781786610799
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This rich collection of essays offers a multi- and inter-disciplinary discussion of "trans-Asia" approaches from critical theory, historical studies, cultural studies to film studies. In doing so the authors lay down the groundwork for a more inclusive knowledge-production and fruitful transnational collaboration. The authors engage with the implications of “trans-Asia” using a range of empirical cases. At the heart of the book is a desire and attempt to give a grounded understanding of what “trans-Asia” approaches are by examining human mobilities, media culture flows and connections across Asia and beyond in four key aspects: cross-border flows and connections; inter-Asian comparison and referencing; transnational and de-nationalized approaches; and cross-border collaboration.

Chapter 1

Trans-Asia as Method: A Collaborative and Dialogic Project in a Globalized World

Koichi Iwabuchi

With the intensifying globalization processes, transnational connections engendered by human mobilities, media culture flows, and people’s solidarity across Asian region have been much developed and we are required to understand how transnationally shared issues are specifically and inter-relatedly articulated in a particular country or society. This chapter will address the potential of “trans-Asia as method” approaches to further advance such intellectual engagement and collaborative practice. Referring to research projects that I have been conducting, it will discuss some ways to engage and tackle the issues that Asian societies share through tactical progression of trans-Asia comparison, mutual referencing, and reciprocated learning as well as the enhancement of collaboration and dialogue across various divides and borders.

Rise of Trans-Asia and Inter-Asia Approaches

In the last twenty years, we have observed the rise of inter-Asia and trans-Asia approaches to the study of socio-cultural issues in Asian regions. It testifies the growing concern to engage with the promotion of cross-regional critical dialogue. In this respect, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies has been organizing highly successful academic activities in terms of journal publication, bi-annual conference, consortium, and postgraduate students camp since 2000, aiming to “build a platform for an ‘inter-Asia’ intellectual community by creating links between and across local circles.” More specifically, it sets out to: “(1) generate and circulate critical work and out of Asia and beyond; (2) slowly link and facilitate dialogues between the disconnected critical circles within Asia and beyond; and (3) provide a platform on which academic and movement intellectual work can intersect.” While not being exclusive to researchers located outside Asian regions and being “conscious that there is no unity to the imaginary entity called ‘Asia,’ hence the term ‘Inter-Asia,’ ” it still has some emphasis on the promotion of hitherto unrealized conversation and alliance among “local” academics and their works (in local languages). As Chen argues, it is a project of Asia as method that generates de- imperialization of knowledge production: “using Asia as an imaginary anchoring point can allow societies in Asia to become one another’s reference points, so that the understanding of the self can be transformed, and subjectivity rebuilt” and this will lead to the construction of “an alternative horizon, perspective, or method for posing a different set of questions about world history.”¹ As Chua paraphrases Chen’s point as the co-leader of IACS project, hitherto underexplored, inter-Asian comparison or referencing is considered meaningful for understanding modern trajectories of Asian countries in a new critical light, as it is based on shared experiences of “forced” modernization and less hierarchical relationships than a prevailing West Asia comparison that is based on the assumed temporal distance between them.²

While also engaging de-Westernization of knowledge production, trans-Asia studies more specifically aim to investigate the advancement of globalization process that engenders cross-border flows and connections of capital, people, and media culture and renders many issues transnationally linked. For example, Social Science Research Council in the United States has developed Inter-Asia programs since 2008. It aims to “reconceptualize Asia as a dynamic and interconnected formation” and “move beyond the territorial fixities of area-studies research.” It also encourages junior scholars via a grant program and the organization of inter-Asia connections conference series. Some new journals also focus on inter-Asia or trans-Asia approaches such as Transnational Asia: an online interdisciplinary journal (Rice University) and TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia. They aim to “challenge traditional understandings of Asia, moving beyond the confines of area studies and nation-state focus,” as it “posits that these boundaries are unnecessarily limiting, and attempt to examine issues on the supra-national level.” National University of Singapore has launched a new PhD program of Comparative Asian Studies (CAS) that “attuned to Asia’s interconnectedness and its deepening integration at the local level” and “One of the programme’s distinctive feature is its attention to inter-Asian connections across regional boundaries and cultural zones.” University of Wisconsin, Madison, has also been organizing annual Trans-Asia Graduate Student Conference to reflect the emerging significance and interests in trans-Asia approaches. These developments clearly reflect on the escalation of cross-border flows and connections that makes many issues transnational.

“Trans-Asia as Method” Projects

In my academic trajectory of cultural and media studies, I have been taking trans-Asia approach since mid-1990s, even before these trends occurred. I have been engaging with the examination of trans-Asia culture flows, exchanges, and connections and developing an approach of what I call “trans-Asia as method.” It has three key features, which overlap but not identical with the abovementioned approaches of inter-Asia and trans-Asia studies. One is concerned with issues and phenomena for academic investigation and socio-historical context of globalization in which they have become significant. Trans-Asia as method, unlike inter-Asia approaches, particularly concerns how the intensification of cross-border cultural flows and human mobilities have been newly engendering trans-local dialogues, connections, association, rivalry, and antagonism in Asian (mostly East Asia for my recent investigation) contexts. I have been considering whether and how they are implicated in historically constituted unevenness and gives rise to cross-border dialogue over transnationally shared issues. Also relevant is the consideration of how many issues have been transnationally shared and cannot be well dealt with by the existing framework of nation-state or Asia–West binary, while we have observed a new kind of global or internationalized governance that tends to re-highlight the national borders.³ Second, such study of trans-Asia flows and connections of capital, people, and media culture in Asia aims to advance the de-Westernized knowledge production. It enables us to have a new perspective and understanding of the issues regarding cultural globalization processes from similar and different Asian experiences and facilitates localized (re-)conceptualization and theorization through comparison and mutual referencing of (post)modern experiences in Asia. My approach also examines how mutual referencing has been developing as mundane practices among people who consume cultures from other parts of Asia and whether and how they have been generating cross-border dialogue. This is related to the third feature of “trans-Asia as method” approach, which is not confined to the production of knowledge per se. “Trans-Asia as method” is a collaborative project to not just go beyond the compartmentalized conception of “Asia” and region/nation, and produce de-Westernized knowledge from Asian experiences but also take seriously academic’s role as public coordinator in a globalized world to engage with the question of how to facilitate cross-border dialogue over and mutual engagement with transnationally shared issues by promoting collaboration with diverse social actors across borders.

That is to say, trans-Asia as method takes perspectives and approaches that “trans” implies seriously—critical engagement with transnational circulation of capital, people, and culture and uneven connections it engenders (“across/through”); going beyond a mutually exclusively demarcated understanding of region and nation (“beyond”); and striving to conceptualize and materialize an open and dialogic social relation (“into another state of things”). The project of “trans-Asia as method” is to envision and actualize Asia as a dialogic communicative space in which people across borders collaborate to connect diverse voices, concerns, and problems in various, unevenly intersecting public sites in which the national is still a major site but does not exclusively take over public interests. In this respect, the “method” in “trans-Asia as method” suggests less a pure academic methodology, parallel to Chen’s point that “ ‘Asia as method’ ceases to look at Asia as object of analysis.”⁴ It is a tactic by which to engender alternative modes of knowledge production and dialogic collaboration that enable people to tackle and transform the existing unequal composition of society and the world. What is required for researcher is, then, to conjointly advance two kinds of engagement with trans-Asian connection—the production of critical knowledge accessible and relevant to wider publics and the coordinating role in the promotion of people’s mediated dialogue—to enhance a sense of together-ness and dialogic relationship among various social subjects and across various borders.

One would be inclined to ask if such approaches as trans-Asia or inter-Asia tend to be parochial and exclusive to non-Asia regions and researchers. Other related questions might be how Asia can be defined and which Asia is included and excluded. These are very important reminders of the danger of implicit reproduction of uneven power relations and cultural exceptionalism. Aiming to advance the innovative production of knowledge through reciprocal learning from other Asian experiences, trans-Asia as method, and inter-Asia approaches too, is a self-critical tactical invitation to activate dialogue among hitherto internationally unattended scholarly work of Asian regions—through still mostly limited to English language works, which is an imperative issue beyond the scope of this paper. But it is neither a closed-minded regionalism nor to elucidate Asian modern experiences in an essentialist term in contrast to and/or separate from Western and other non-Western experiences. By “re-embracing” deep-seated Western inflections on Asian experiences, an inspired Asian comparison and referencing aims to refreshingly elucidate and theorize specific processes in which the experiences of Asian modernizations have been formulated, whereby the production of knowledge derived from Asian experiences leads to the articulation of visions and values trans-locally relevant for transmuting not just Asian societies but also European societies and the world as a whole. As such trans-Asia or inter-Asia approach must be differentiated from parochial regionalism for it does not discount researchers working in and on the contexts outside Asia nor underestimate the significance of transnational collaboration including other parts of the world either.

It should also be noted that trans-Asia as method is more of a tactical approach (hence “method”) rather than aiming to be set up as a comprehensive academic methodology of a particular discipline and it does not aim to be all inclusive of “Asia” and regional connections. The definition of Asia is rather difficult and eventually impossible to make apart from that of “non-West.” I would contend that it is indeed imperative to give more attentions to hitherto neglected (sub)regions, connections and people. “Trans-Asia as method” is not a magical approach to solve these issues. The following discussion of my projects are just a few instances of trans-Asia as method approaches, and the activation of various trans-Asia approaches to cover diverse regions and issues would be required to topple regional and subregional exclusion and hierarchy. While the exclusion and uneven power relation should be always kept in mind whenever we use such a regional term, however, it would not be productive either if we try to be all inclusive of Asian regions and connections within. The question of which Asia to be analyzed by “trans-Asia as method” depends on aims, key questions, objects, and the scope of places/regions of investigation and uneven power relations and the reproduction of hierarchical relationship within the region is always part of the issue to be analyzed. Trans-Asia, as method in my research projects, is specifically concerned with the investigation of regional flows and connections of people and media culture and associated issues of diversity and multicultural inclusion in East Asian contexts. This is not to discount the significance and necessity of attending to Southeast Asia or South Asia in such investigation, but the focus on East Asia, and particular locales, people, and cultures within and across it is relevant and productive to consider specific issues, with which my projects are dealing with. At the same time, through thematic investigation of globalization process, trans-Asia as method would open up an alternative idea, scope, and cultural geography of “Asia” and its “regional” connections. Dealing with ethno-cultural cross-border flows, connections, and dialogues, trans-Asia as method expands the definition of “Asia” in terms of experience and practice of migrants and diaspora dwelling in other regions and countries and the circulation of media culture outside the conventionally understood geography of Asia such as Australia or the United States.

Mutual Referencing and Cross-Border Dialogue as Mundane Practice

The project of trans-Asia as method has been developed through my own academic works and experience of relocation. Moving back and forth between Japan and Australia and frequent contacts with other East Asian cities and researchers have much to do with the shaping of my own trans-Asia approach. Being concerned with the rise of East and Southeast Asian media culture flows and connections with some focus on Japan, my PhD research was concerned with trans-Asian flows and connections though I tended to use “intra-regional” at that time. Located in Australia, I could have a kind of bird’s-eye view of such cultural dynamic while conducting field research in various parts of East and Southeast Asia. After completing a PhD, I have worked in Tokyo for more than twelve years. The first part of the period coincided with the rise of inter-Asia cultural studies and a growing academic interest in trans-Asia media culture flows and connections. Since the middle of 1990s, production capacity of media cultures such as TV drams, films, and popular music has considerably developed in East Asia. Furthermore, inter-Asian promotion and co-production of media cultures have become commonplace by the partnerships among media and cultural industries. There has emerged a loose cultural geography as most of East Asian media cultures except some cultures are capitalized, circulating and consumed predominantly, if not exclusively, in East Asia (including those migrants and diasporas from the region living outside it). Examining socio-historically contextualized experiences that intersect East Asia as region, many researchers have been seriously examining cultural dynamics of production, circulation, and consumption that have been engendered under the globalization processes. I eventually met many cultural studies scholars in East and Southeast countries as well as in Australia and Euro-American countries who were conducting similar researches. Collaborating with them, I further developed my PhD project by extending the scope especially to other East Asian culture especially that of South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

It was in this context that I developed an idea of “trans-Asia as method.” I first used the term in the Japanese publication in 2004.⁵ While I was involved if indirectly in inter-Asia cultural studies project, I preferred a term “trans-Asia” to “inter-Asia” not least because of my interest is mostly analyzing the growing occurrences of transnational cultural flows and connections in Asia. I also use “as method,” being inspired by Takeuchi Yoshimi’s notion of “Asia as method” like Chen and many others to suggest that comparison and Asian modern experience and the construction of modern subjectivity under Western domination might induce a new perspective and knowledge while it would be impossible and unproductive to define “Asia” in a clearly demarcated way. At that time, I was fascinated with a possibility that trans-Asia approaches critically and innovatively reconsider the politics of cultural transgression in the Asian contexts through the examination of the flows and connections by media, capital, and people across and through Asian regions under globalization processes,...

Table of contents

• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Toward Trans-Asia Projects, Possibilities, Paradoxes
• 1 Trans-Asia as Method: A Collaborative and Dialogic Project in a Globalized World
• 2 What is the “Trans” in Trans-Asia?
• 3 Transcending Trans-Asia? Lessons from Trans-Europe
• 4 Toward Asian Independence: The Transpacific and Inter-Asian Trajectories of Taraknath Das
• 5 On Exile Trilogy: Trans-Asia Trajectory
• 6 Asian Theatricalities in the Transpacific: The Hispanophone Transculturation of Nick Rongjun Yu’s The Crowd or, Performing the Chinese Cultural Revolution in Peru
• 7 Repeating Anime’s Creativity across Asia
• 8 Trans/Asia: A Multi-Mobilities Solution to Identity Politics?
• 9 Dwelling, Aspirations, and the Good Life: Inter-Referencing Young People in Beijing and Hong Kong
• Coda: Rolling Back toward a Trans-Asia Future?
• Index
• List of Contributors