Embodied inter-referencing: encounters with and among “Asian” students in the Australian classroom

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the pedagogical practice of referencing my experiences as a transnational Korean American woman in the classroom and considers how it opens up space for domestic and international students of East, Southeast, and South Asian backgrounds to reflect on their different identities, histories, and cultures. In particular, it focuses on how this practice enables Asian students to share their experiences of and insights about racial difference, racism, and whiteness in Australia and other parts of the world. Building on the concept of Asian “inter-referencing” from Chua Beng Huat (2015), I coin the term “embodied inter-referencing” to describe the strategic ways I use autobiographical narrative to create an inclusive, interactive, and mutually respectful learning space. I centre here on how some Asian students respond to this strategy by telling their own stories and in the process, create transnational, diasporic, and inter-Asian affective communities inside and outside the classroom.     

Soeng Joeng Toi: opening fissures towards a platform and a bridge

ABSTRACT

In May of 2017, a space called Soeng Joeng Toi was established, gathering a variety of people to share and co-organise a space together. While it may be considered a relative newcomer, Soeng Joeng Toi’s appearance can be seen as an inevitable breakaway from the mainstream political, economic and cultural climate of a city like Guangzhou. From its initial planning stages to its official operation, much of Soeng Joeng Toi’s inspiration and methods have come from extensive exchange with independent spaces both in China and abroad, where mutual recognition of similar conditions and thinking of the commons have led these different spaces to continue developing in a sustained dialogue. This text, written from the perspective of two of Soeng Joeng Toi’s “co-proprietors,” introduces the beginnings of Soeng Joeng Toi, its current operations and experiences of connecting with others as well as explores the possibilities of a shared activism involving people from different fields and geographic regions.     

Coping with cultural differences in healthcare: Chinese immigrant mothers’ health information sharing via WeChat

Immigrants face the challenge of obtaining culturally specific health information and adapting to a new healthcare system. Through qualitative content analysis, this study explores how Chinese immigrant mothers use the ethnic social media—WeChat to engage in health information sharing and coping with cultural differences in healthcare between the U.S. and China. Based on the data collected from one WeChat group in a metropolitan city in the northeastern U.S., Chinese immigrant mothers frequently discuss the topics of “doctors and hospitals,” “insurance and cost,” “medicine and treatment,” and “alternative health care.” They constantly compare Chinese health care beliefs and practices with western ones. They adopt various acculturation strategies to manage the cultural differences in healthcare beliefs, practices, and systems. We call for future research to further examine immigrants’ health information sharing via social media and consider acculturation as coping strategies or processes in the health communication context.     

Mediated absent presence in forced displacement

ABSTRACT

For many forcefully displaced people worldwide, notions around one’s sense of “home” and “place” in the world are perpetually unsettled. This article explores how digital technologies interact with embodied, material experiences within the geographical location refugees are residing in. Empirical examples from ethnographic research conducted among Iraqi urban refugees, living in prolonged uncertainty in Jordan, shows how situated experiences of legal, material, and social uncertainty reinforce particular mediated socialities. Pivotal studies have shown how digital connections engender virtual home-making practices and a wide variety of connected presences. This study points to the other side of the same coin: the cultivation of “absent presence.” “Absent presence” refers to feelings—the ambivalence that experiences of prolonged displacement bring about—but also to active disengagement and affective tactics in response. These engender a further separation from the physical world where forced migrants are not deemed welcome.     

Not exotic,but too familiar…

ABSTRACT

Urbanization over in last three decades in China has produced and accumulated more and more complex problems and challenges in everyday life. People need different spaces and ways to learn about them, not only to understand what kind of problems they face, but also find a way to act together in order to change their passive situation and take part in the process which always seem to be dominated by government and technology. “Womende Chengshi” (Our Cities) citizen forum was built in 2012 and has lasted for almost 5 years in Shanghai. It aims to create a new educational space for citizens to discuss emerging city problems and to imagine alternative ways of urban life. After a concise introduction about this forum in Chinese social context, this paper will focus on three points. First, while the ideal setting suggests that citizens are everyone living in the city, “Our Cities” actually confronts the concrete ones shaped by various spaces and limited times in the whole city system. So how to struggle with different forces in limited time and space in everyday life is the main duty this forum needs to face. The third point follows: what kind of standard we could have to estimate such self-education process?     

Pedagogy and Foreignness

Based on my reflections on “being a foreigner,” I explore the boundaries of citizenship education in this essay. I use my foreign identity to articulate how social justice education can perpetuate closed-mindedness in classrooms by moving too quickly to student activism. I situate my experiences and reflections on being a foreigner within previous conversations about notions of certainty and indoctrination in the field of education philosophy, and I make an argument to create a safe intellectual space for my students. Creating such space is not neglecting moral responsibility or perpetuating privilege but actually navigating through the binary between “us” and “them.”     

Frankish Captives in Mamlūk Cairo

Latin presence in the Middle East came to an end with the fall of Acre in 690/1291. Among the last prisoners, Roger of Stanegrave, who gave testimony of his captivity in Cairo, was released around 715/1315. Therefore, how can we explain that Egyptian chroniclers kept on telling the life and tribulations of “Frankish captives” (asārā min al-Afranj) in Cairo as late as the last decades of the fourteenth century? This article looks first at the conditions of the Latin prisoners in Mamlūk Cairo and at their forced labour on the building sites of the city. It investigates afterwards the astonishing life and business of their descendants, trading wine and dealing with entertainment and prostitution in the city centre of Cairo, before being confronted with repression by Mamlūk authorities and being scattered over the most disreputable areas of the city. The history of Cairo and its urban fabric gives a unique opportunity to bring to light the life of people still referred to as “Frankish captives”, one century after the end of the crusader wars, and to understand how they finally became indigenous.     

Afro-Asian solidarity and the “capital” question: looking beyond the last frontier

The argument in this paper is a continuation of an argument that I have been making for some time, which questions the universal history of capital, crucial to which are assumptions regarding its historical necessity. Capital is not only understood to be a historically unavoidable condition but one that has already colonized the world such that there is no outside to it. In developing my argument regarding the “outside” to capital, where I find Kalyan Sanyal's work very useful and significant, I claim that much of the problem with theorizing capital today has to do not with the beast itself but with the inherited paraphernalia of western theory and philosophy. After a survey of the passive revolution debate in India, which I read as a sign of the actual impossibility of “capitalist” development across different parts of the world, I move on to argue that both “capital/ism” and the “logic of capital” (accumulation) are misleading concepts concealing an essential “emptiness,” which I work out through the idea of “dependent arising” taken from Buddhist philosophy.     

A More Perfect European Union?: The Transnational Networks of the European Union’s Embassy Open House in Washington,D.C.

Annually, the Delegation of the European Union (EU) in Washington, D.C., holds an embassy open house day for its 27 member nations to celebrate European culture and educate tourists on the functions of EU politics and international relations. Amidst an ongoing debt crisis and a continuing exploration of its identity as a supranational entity, “Embassy Day” affords an opportunity to see the EU as a spatial network uneasily caught in the tensions between the often nostalgic nationalism of its constituent countries and the future-oriented technocratic transnationalism of its composite alliance. By analyzing the cultural artifacts of Embassy Day from its handouts, maps, speeches, architecture, and performances, I treat Embassy Day as a “rhetorical experience” and the EU embassies as a transnational network imposed over the city space of Washington, D.C. In the process, I argue that the very fragmented nature of the open house’s complex simulation of Europe mirrors the fragmented nature of European identity itself, and thus displays the anxiety around how the EU places itself and its power vis-à-vis the global community.     

Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society: negotiating the common with/by/through the urban daily

ABSTRACT

This paper introduces Dinghaiqiao Mutual Aid Society (DMAS, dinghaiqiao huzhushe, its urban context, issues that it concerns and strategies that it uses by introducing three of its projects. As a group that locates itself in a historically working-class neighborhood under the pressures of urban renewal, it clarifies its vision by both embodying the participants to the projects, and extending knowledge production and imagination of the place into a more profound social and historical dimension. The “common” here, serves as the interactive element and mechanism in DMAS events, as well as in its operational logic. The strategies that it develops, based on this, is a reflection and transcendence of the social political atmosphere and questions the developmental ideology of the city.     

Whose liberation? Iranian popular music and the fetishization of resistance

ABSTRACT

This article explores a number of issues concerning the representation of Iranian popular music outside Iran, and specifically the somewhat romanticized discourses of “resistance” and “freedom” that have tended to characterize both journalistic and scholarly writings. The article discusses a number of examples, but focuses primarily on the case of the music video “Happy in Tehran,” which was posted on YouTube in 2014 and which challenged certain local cultural and legal boundaries on behavior in public space. As a result, those responsible for the video were arrested, prompting an outcry, both within Iran and internationally; they were released soon after and eventually received suspended sentences. The article discusses the ways in which the “Happy in Tehran” incident was reported in the media outside Iran and offers alternative readings of the video and its meanings. Ultimately, the article considers how such reductionist views feed into wider regimes of orientalist representation and asks whose agenda such fetishization of resistance serves.     

Rebuilding the homeland in poetry and song: Simin Behbahani,Dariush Eghbali,and the making of a transnational national anthem

ABSTRACT

This article traces the transformation of an Iranian nationalist poem by Simin Behbahani entitled “I Will Rebuild You, Homeland” (1981) into an expatriate national anthem, and the poem-song’s subsequent incorporation into protests and political speeches by individuals and groups in and outside of Iran. Employing musical and textual analysis, interviews, and a transnational perspective on cultural circulation and reception, I show how exile pop singer Dariush Eghbali’s adaptation of the original poem mobilized the text and opened it to audience participation. The article argues that the poem and its musical–textual permutations exemplify contemporary Iranian practices of national identification in which conflicting parties attempt to motivate “the Iranian people” to political ends. As actors from around the world and across the political spectrum repeatedly turn to nationalist poetry, song, anthem, and political speech, we observe how mass-mediated popular culture reveals ongoing recourse to nationalist forms even in transnational space.     

Our city of colours: queer/Asian publics in transpacific Vancouver

This article examines the contested relation between discourses of ethnic subjectivity and queer critique of homophobia and transphobia in Vancouver, a transpacific city in Canada that is being touted as “the most Asian city outside of Asia.” I analyse the perceived association of Chinese communities with moral conservatism and the concomitant existence of a vibrant queer Asian cultural scene in the city as a discursive clash between two cultural publics. I examine the underlying dynamics of their antagonism as well as their potential for mutual engagement.     

Implications of Chinese empire discourses in East Asia: critical studies on China

Abstract

China is characterized by a long history, vast land, huge population and diversity unprecedented in world history. In addition, she is a unique case that has successfully completed the transition from empire to the nation-state. Therefore, her historical independence and her continuity become very important subject areas for research, and the concept “empire” re-emerges as a major means of explanation. The essential defining features of empire are tolerance and expansion. I have been reviewing discourses on “China as Empire,” looking at studies of the tributary system, the civilization-state, and the Tianxia view raised from both inside and outside of China. A common characteristic of these discourses is the perception that the past, present and future of China cannot be fully explained by Western concepts such as nation-state. They also reveal that the supposed continuity with the past, which is overemphasized in many studies, does not necessarily always correspond with historical reality. The key focus of the empire discourses is the project of future China. Finally, I put a particular emphasis upon the “perspective of peripheries” in order to find ways to demonstrate the benefits of viewing China as an empire, while also overcoming the weaknesses of empire theory. It is the reason why I apply to the analysis of the empire discourses the “compound state” theory incubated as a way of reunification of the Korean Peninsula.     

Mundi: articulating a post-Umbrella common(s)

ABSTRACT

This paper shares the experiences of an emergent collective of young intellectuals in Hong Kong and its recent project, Mundi, which consists of publication, activist research and communal transmission of knowledge. The project negotiates the notion and practice of “common” at the limit, from within the historical experience of Hong Kong, between academia and public intellectuals, global universalism and local particularism, and colonial knowledge and everyday urban practice. Affected by an intense desire to analyse and theorise the reality of Hong Kong, Mundi engages in a long process of decolonising knowledge production. The paper also explores how Mundi responds to the demand of the present post-Umbrella Hong Kong situation by problematising and re-articulating the common.     

The art of the good life: culture and sustainable prosperity

ABSTRACT

The creative economy has seen cultural policy swallowed up by a narrow vision of economic growth, its impacts on the urban fabric captured by property developers, and its promises of meaningful activity challenged by the exploitation and inequities of cultural labour markets. So it needs to be abandoned and re-thought, but on what basis? This paper analyses the potential for cultural work to encourage alternative visions of the “good life”, in particular, how it might encourage a kind of “sustainable prosperity” wherein human flourishing is not linked to high levels of material consumption but rather the capabilities to engage with cultural and creative practices and communities. We critically explore these ideas in three locations: a London borough, a deindustrialised city in England’s midlands and a rural town on the Welsh/English border. Across these diverse landscapes and socio-economic contexts, we look at different versions of the good life and at the possibilities and constraints of cultural activity as a way of achieving kinds of sustainable prosperity.     

Reinventing Nagasaki: the Christianization of Nagasaki and the revival of an imperial legacy in postwar Japan

This paper explores how Nagasaki was reinvented from an imperial city to an “International Cultural, Christian city” and elicits the continuity of Japanese imperialism in postwar Nagasaki as well as the discontinuity between the war and postwar periods in the city. The paper seeks to determine what history and whose memory have been excluded or erased in the process of remaking Nagasaki into an international Christian city; it examines the particular historical and political conditions that enabled Nagai Takashi, Urakami Catholics and Kitamura Seibou’s Memorial Peace Statue to symbolize Nagasaki’s atomic bomb memory and postwar city identity as an “International Christian city” that “prays.” While Nagai is widely known as a spiritual, religious leader in postwar Nagasaki/Japan, and Kitamura’s Peace Memorial statue dominates Nagasaki’s commemoration space, this paper analyses how US dominance over Japan enabled the country to rehabilitate its imperial past and to revive the imperial legacy by appropriating the GHQ’s (General Headquarters of the Allied Powers’) demilitarization and Christianization policies. It argues that Nagasaki’s postwar reconstruction signifies the failure of what Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010 Chen, Kuan-Hsing. 2010. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham and London: Duke University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) calls the “deimperialization” of Japanese consciousness and subjectivity.     

Herz und mund und tat und terrorismus (heart,mouth, deed,and terrorism)

ABSTRACT

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the efforts of a terrorism that makes revolution its goal have sprung from the dream of unity between words and action. In ōe Kenzaburō’s linked texts, “Seventeen,” we find a depiction of a terrorist, or “political youth” who dreams of attaining a “peak orgasm” in communion with the “Pure Emperor.” Moreover, for this youth, “terrorism” means an action undertaken by the self at the very moment of coitus between action and words. It is proper that the terrorist should be transformed from a historical anonym to a subject of language through action (prior to carrying out terror he or she cannot appear as a subject of speech). In the linked text of “A Political Youth Dies,” however, the young man’s action is obliterated in the flood of images coming from television, and he is stripped of language. In this sense, the youth’s situation can be seen as homologous with the terrorism that is bare action stripped of speech, pervasive in our twenty-first century present. A volume containing the translation of “A Political Youth Dies” into German, together with the original Japanese text, has now appeared. Thanks to this publication, we can at last read the original Japanese text. It is now time for us, who have been “deprived of [this] text” for so long, to turn our attention to it.     

The city as extracurricular space: re‐instituting urban pedagogy in South Asia

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 which we can reconstruct existing institutional frameworks. Drawing on the work of CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai, this papers explores the post‐industrial landscapes of the Mumbai Mill and Port Lands as a case study in two extracurricular research projects, which grew into urban design and community planning interventions in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, where urban spaces became the arena for re‐imagining the relations between knowledge production, institutional boundaries, and civic activism on which nationalism has imposed a long estrangement.     

Toward an Ethnic Studies Critique for Teacher Education

In an effort to humanize students of color in teacher education research, this study shifts away from the question, “How can we add students of color?” and instead asks, “How might teacher education programs be transformed to make space for students of color?” To begin, we articulate an ethnic studies critique for teacher education based on the demands for ethnic studies in the late 1960s. We then apply this critique in an analysis of the experiences of twelve preservice teachers of color. We argue that teacher education may be structured—institutionally and ideologically—to hinder the success of preservice teachers of color. We conclude with three suggestions for teacher education grounded in the ethnic studies critique, which offers an alternative paradigm for thinking of students of color beyond numbers and statistics.