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Contact the
organizers: Asian Studies Conference (ASCJ) c/o Institute of
Asian Cultural Studies, International Christian University 3-10-2
Osawa, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo 181
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Session 4
Postcolonial Studies in Comparative Perspectives: India,
Philippines and Japan
Organizers: Yoshiko Nagano, Kanagawa University and Chiharu Takenaka,
Meiji Gakuin University
This panel is a modest attempt to present provocative discussions
of postcolonial studies from the perspectives of Asian studies.
Since the end of the 1980s, much has been written about the "postcolonial,"
yet it is not still clear what is "postcolonial," because
this term has been differently used or interpreted. In spite
of the wider variety of its interpretation, we might positively
understand this concept as a means to explore new dimensions
in Asian studies. This is because this concept enables us to
disclose the pervasive colonial legacy in the way of thinking
of peoples and its cultural influence that has had detrimental
effects on the societies even after independence.
This panel brings together four papers which raise and discuss
various issues concerning the conceptualization or the interpretation
of historical facts in three countries such as India, the Philippines
and Japan, in relation to the postcolonial studies. The four
paper presenters give their own interpretations of the concept
of "postcolonial" and explore new approaches in Asian
studies, encompassing their respective fields such as history,
comparative literature, political science and anthropology. If
we understand postcolonial studies as part of cultural studies,
interdisciplinary approaches might be useful in opening up the
possibility of deploying the concept of the "postcolonial"
for reconstructing interpretations of Asian societies from their
own perspectives.
1) Yoshiko Nagano, Kanagawa University. "Filipino
Intellectuals and Postcolonial Theory: A Case of E. San Juan,
Jr."
The 1990s saw the remarkable transformation of the trends
and directions in the Philippine studies, in terms of the growing
interest on colonial discourses in historiography, political
science and literature. The new trends and directions in the
Philippine studies might be understood as a part of the reflection
of the phenomenal rise of cultural studies in the Western hemisphere
since the 1980s. However, it is particularly important for us
to understand them in the context of Philippine historical experiences
before and after independence throughout the 20th century.
This paper discusses the distinctive features of the writings
of E. San Juan, Jr., focusing on his understandings of postcolonial
theory, in the light of the rise of new trends in the Philippine
studies. San Juan is a scholar on comparative literature and
is widely known as one of the most prominent Filipino critics
on the postcolonial studies. Considering a fact that the concept
of "postcolonial" is a new one and still has very much
ambiguity, in this paper, first I clarify my way of understanding
its concept. Second I critically analyze the critical approaches
of San Juan toward the postcolonial theory and his conceptual
background to criticize it. Third, I grope for the positive linkages
between the postcolonial studies and the new directions in the
Philippine studies.
2) Caroline S. Hau, Kyoto University. "Strongmen and
the State: Critiquing Charismatic Authority in Philippine Political
Discourse."
This paper focuses on recent scholarly articulations of "strongmen
politics" in the Philippines through an analysis of John
Sidel's Capital, Coercion and Crime and Patricio Abinales'
Making Mindanao. Writing against the grain of academic
and popular acceptance of the explanatory validity and enduring
power of "traditional" patron-client relations in shaping
Philippine politics, Sidel's concept of "bossism" and
Abinales' concept of "strongmen" both underscore instead
the historical process and fraught legacies of American colonial
state formation as the condition of possibility of postcolonial
strongmen politics in the Philippines. Drawing their case studies
not from the capital city of Manila, but from outside the "center",
both works point to local negotiations of state power as crucial
to the production, maintenance, and contestation of strongmen
politics in the country. But these works diverge crucially on
the question of the strongmen's relationship to the political
system and their manipulation of coercive and socio-economic
resources in the course of their participation in electoral politics.
Such a divergence in interpretation is revealing in that it brings
ineluctably into focus not just the issue of what kind of responses
are possible or available to Filipino strongmen and the people
who make up their constituents or "followers", but
of the manner in which the discourse on strongmen itself participates
in the construction of strongmen power and responses to it in
postcolonial Philippines.
3) Chiharu Takenaka, Meiji Gakuin University. "Quest
of Mahatma Gandhi: Situating the Subaltern Studies in Indian
Political Discourse."
Postcolonial, if taken simply as 'after colonialism',
leaves us with a puzzle. It is interesting to observe the proliferation
of 'postcolonial' concepts among concerned scholars exactly when
the nation-state, the very political institution to succeed colonialism,
now faces serious challenges within and without in the age of
globalization.
In early 1980s, a group of historians, later known from their
collective work, the Subaltern Studies, aimed to search
for alternative writings to Indian historiography of the time.
In contrast to either orthodox nationalist historiography or
counter-part of communist historiography, their focus was on
the unwritten figures of history, as shown in their reference
to Gramsci's concept of 'subaltern'. Re-interpretation of the
historical materials left by the colonial authority went together
with pursuing direct popular voices in scattered records. As
the charismatic figure of anti-colonial struggles, the Subaltern
Studies historians naturally took Mahatma Gandhi as the main
subject of research. They juxtaposed the images of Mahatma as
'gods of peoples', deeply rooted in the subaltern discourse,
with the constructed image of 'Father of Nation' as a political
leader, deliberately manifested in the elite discourse.
The postmodernist intervention of Gayatri C. Spivak and main
stream cultural studies, however, have left Gandhi out of focus
and forgotten as an agenda. In fact, the Subaltern Studies group
ceased to be a forum of historians. They led themselves not only
the deconstruction of nationalist or Marxist historiography but
also the concepts of 'nation' and 'history'. It was argued that
the right-wingers came up to fill this vacuum and provided a
more coarse, if popular, reading of history. The Subaltern Studies
scholars, therefore, are held responsible for the emergence of
Hindutva Historiography.
How can we write history today, facing the postmodernists on
one side, the right-wing ideologues on the other? To answer this
question, my paper focuses on the way that Mahatma Gandhi has
been analyzed or neglected in the Subaltern Studies, and tries
to situate the Subaltern Studies as an intellectual endeavor
to analyze postcolonial nationalism, which has given a tremendous
impact on academic discourse beyond Indian historiography.
4) Toru Komma, Kanagawa University. "Memory and History:
Challenge of Writing a History of Tanushimaru Town, Kyushu, Japan"
Postcolonial studies have proved science to be an essential
device for maintaining the establishment. Then, a new scholarly
paradigm is to be set up through dissent from the establishment.
This, however, could be a paralogism, for it calls on amateurs
for practicing academic activities involving professionals. The
History of Tanushimaru (1996-7) (in Japanese) is a successful
example which has overcome the puzzling problem.
The editorial board realized that history was composed of discourses
carried in historical documents and that the commoners were totally
wiped out from most historical scenes. It accordingly rethought
the meanings of the publication. Hence an epoch-making paradigm
of "local history of and for the commonalties." The
book acquired the residents' support and nation-wide responses
as well. Newspapers often commented on it writing that it was
realistic and innovative enough to adopt the concept of seken
(meaning Japanese Lebenswelt ), instead of foreign
"individual," to describe people and that it aimed
to do away with conventionalities of seken.
The board chose the policy owing to the overwhelming actuality
that nothing elucidated commoners' daily routine as long as it
was faithful to the positivistic "documents-for-documents"-sake"
policy. At last it introduced postcolonial fieldwork of anthropology,
for it attached much account of multiple realities expressed
by residents themselves rather than facts recorded in archives.
The History of Tanushimaru exemplifies an alternative
to "history as a science" favored by local governments
as institutions and shows that local autonomy is an everyday
arena for postcolonial practices.
Discussant: Alexander Horstmann, Tokyo University of Foreign
Studies
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