Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization.

How does Cold War discourse continue to be articulated in the contemporary context of Asia? How does an ex-colony such as Taiwan
become a neocoloniser in Southeast Asia, yet was implicated in a
campaign pushing for the island to become the 51st state of the US? How
can scholars continue to challenge the binaries of Asia-versus-West in postcolonial studies while remaining critical to nativism and Eurocentrism? In
what ways can cultural studies more effectively challenge the cultural imaginary formed by capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism? These are just
some of the questions posed in Kuan-hsing Chen’s work, which is partly inspired by TakeuchiYoshimi’s“Asia as Method.”In part building upon the latter’s inter-referencing approach of comparing societies geographically closer
or that share similar historical experiences, the book follows Chen’s continuing efforts of establishing an inter-Asian cultural studies that critically reviews Eurocentric frameworks while examining the inter-connectedness of
the history, culture, and politics of Asian societies. Making an impassioned
appeal for formulating new recourses to how Asia may be approached as
an object of study, this volume in part responds to the discourse of Taiwanese nationalism under former President Lee Teng-hui’s regime, and in
part to Taiwan’s increasing economic dependency on mainland China.