I. Colonialism: Knowledge + Technique = Power

A. Course theme: Learn about Asia, also consider dilemmas of how knowledge about Asia is produced
B. Western European colonialism: economic and political, but also claims about what Asia was
C. Microtechniques of entrenching power: tracing history, counting people, delineating territory

 

II. Orientalism

A. Edward Said, Orientalism (1978)
B. Definition: "...[A] way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European and Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other" (1)
C. East as opposite of West which defines what West is
D. Three forms of Orientalism

1. Academic specialty, regional studies: anthropologists, sociologists, historians, art historians, literary scholars, economists, political scientists, demographers, etc.
2. Mode of thought in literature and philosophy, Oriental/Occidental
3. Combination of two as practical strategy for colonial rule: "the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient -- dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over it" (3).

 

III. Census, Map, Museum

A. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 1991
B. Census

1. Counting and defining who people are
2. Malaya example: religious categories yield to ethnic ones, "Hindoos" become "Indians."
3. Dutch in Indonesia came up with different terms to describe people
4. Concrete administrative effects: identified as "Malay," told to live in territories administered by Islamic law

C. Map

1. Census categories of people were located in space
2. Logic of mapping
3. Precolonial models of territory: example of radiating centers
4. Maps = "totalizing classification"
5. Changes Thai ideas: muang (center) replaced by prathet (country)

D. Museum

1. 1800s: European interest in Asian monuments and antiquities
2. Angkor wat is "discovered" by the French (photo: http://eipcp.net/transversal/1007/kuster/en)
3. Claims: locals didn't take care of monuments, they had been constructed by other groups
4. Museum displays and catalogs circulate widely, create ideas of Asian civilization, history

E. Example: French Indochina

1. Colonies formed from 1860s-1880s
2. Vietnam divided into 3 territories: Cochinchina (colony), Annam and Tonkin (protectorates)
3. French Indochina also includes Laos and Cambodia
4. Differences between regions of Vietnam supported through ethnography, linguistics, history, economics, cartography
5. Differences between Vietnamese and Laos, Khmer downplayed

F. Anderson: "It was precisely the infinite quotidian reproducibility of its regalia that revealed the real power of the state" (183).

 

IV. Nationalist Repercussions: Photography in Indonesia

A. Colonial narratives of maps and identity often adopted by nationalists
B. Gandhi: India and later partition
C. Classify peoples, traditions, cultures
D. Role of photography (Strassler 2010): anxieties about nation, modernity, tradition in Indonesia
E. Ibu Soekilah's photo collection
F. Photos shape what people see as Indonesia

1. Landscapes, activities
2. Entwine personal narratives with historical events
3. Young man who "'smelled of the Communist Party'" (3)
4. "It is through the reflexive production and circulation of images that 'imagined' social entities like nations become visible and graspable, that they come to seem to exist prior to and independent of those images" (4).
5. Connect intimate and public

G. Genres: photojournalism, studio portraits, amateur photographers
H. Role of Chinese: "brokers of a specifically Indonesian modernity" (15).
I. Tension: global modernity versus nostalgic indigenous tradition
J. Colonialism enacted in specific ways

1. Power exercised through census, map, museum
2. Power felt and contested through self, family, technology

K. Complex, multiple claims about culture and identity get flattened or exaggerated in political contests over who "we" and "others" are or should be

For a timeline of Indonesian history, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15114517