아시아 지역연구의 문화정치학적 전환 문제

Abstract

This paper argues that area studies should generate cultural-political transformations by working on the following: 1) it should overcome the perspective which the superpowers constructed in the aftermath of the colonial and the Cold War experience; 2) it should establish the reflective “self-knowledge”; 3) it should propose a new frame in regional awareness. This cultural-political approach, I propose, focuses on “deplacement” of topics; that is, Asia is contextualized as a cultural-political site (including ideology, system and everyday life) across distinct times and spaces while engaging with and overcoming the discourse of modernization. This new approach elucidates the process for the identity formation by going beyond the discourse based on the experience of foreign invasions. The most important task, I argue, is to explore how modern Asia made efforts to establish its own identity. The development of inter-Asia cultural studies is contingent upon this identity formation; in doing so, the realization and invention of frameworks would come into being. The idea and life are interactive among Asians through complicated economic flows and political changes. In the process of incorporating regional elements, various counter flows have appeared which I name as cultural site, the place of encounters and conflicts. With the comprehension of this cultural site, I argue, Asia can be fully understood and the Asian prospect may testify to the identification of Asian experience. For this reason, the cultural-political transformation of Asian studies, that is “cultural turn,” is essentially and inevitably necessary. In order to eliminate the misunderstandings the postcolonial depoliticization provoked, this interaction between culture and politics should be the immediate need for Asian area studies.