Alterities in Asia Reflections on Identity and Regionalism [Paperback]

This book investigates the politics of identity in Asia and explores how different groups of people inside and outside Asia have attempted to relate to the alterity of the places and cultures in the region through various modes (literary and filmic representation, scholarly knowledge, and so on) and at different points in time. Although coming from different perspectives like literary criticism, film studies, geography, cultural history, and political science, the contributors collectively argue that Asian otherness is more than the dialectical interplay between the Western self and one of its many others, and more than just the Orientalist discourse writ large. Rather, they demonstrate the existence of multiple levels of inter-Asian and intercultural contact and consciousness that both subvert as much as they consolidate the dominant Western Core-Asian periphery framework that structures what the mainstream assumes to be knowledge of Asia.

With chapters covering a wealth of topics from Korea and its Cold War history, to Australia's Asian identity crisis, this book will be of huge interest to anyone interested in critical Asian studies, Asian ethnicity, postcolonialism and Asia cultural studies.

Leong Yewis an Assistant Professor in the University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore. He is the author of The Disjunctive Empire of International Relations (2003).

1. The Asian as Other, Leong Yew  2. The Transformation of Asian Regionalism and the Construction of Anticommunist Identity: The Discourse of Asia in Early Cold War South Korea, Kim Ye-rim  3. Constructing an Alternative Regional Identity: Panchsheeland IndiaChina Diplomacy at the AsianAfrican Conference 1955, Sally Percival Wood  4. Naming and locating Asia: Australian dilemmas in its regional identity, David Walker  &llÓ&