THE 'NEW ASIA' AND ACADEMIA: THE ART OF CRAFTING SHARED REGIONAL SPACES·

This paper presents and evaluates strategies employed by Southeast ASian academics and think tanks in 'regionalizing knowledge'. Sections one and two of the paper provide an overview of recent 'Asian' historical imaginings, arguing that the search for the "roots of ASEAN" in the distant past is politically motivated. The final two sections focus on an intellectual project involving some of the most prominent scholars of East and South Asia. Those involved in Inter-Asia, also known as the Movements project, are scholar-activists with a well-articulated political agenda. In analyzing the inter-Asian agenda, I question its implications: "decolonizing mindset n and "becoming Asian n are fraught with ambiguity.


Introduction
In order to achieve the East-Asian community we will have to seek a new way to exchange, share, distribute, and utilize science, technology, economic opportunity, and political power.

Sunu Jongho, Toward the Universal Contribution by East Asian Universities
The contemporary call for indigenization in East Asia is a call to overcome irrelevance and to reverse academic dependency. The call is to decolonize the much Westernized social science discourse in the region and subsequently to practice relevant social science. The call for indigenization is a call for creativity and originality. More than anything else, the call involves the collective quest for an East Asian academic identity.
institutes, regionally oriented journals, academic exchange programs and associations to participate in the collective quest for identity.
This paper is about scholars of and in Asia, and academic practices that promote a sense of identity in the 'New Asia'. I use the term 'New Asia' -initially the catchphrase of Singapore advertising agenciesto refer to the discourse on specifically Asian cultural qualities and practices: the 'Asian way', 'East Asian consciousness', 'Asian renaissance', 'Asianization of Asia', 'Asian values'. The rise of the discourse in the 1990s had everything to do with rapid economic development and living in postcolonial assertion. Hood Salleh writes in The New Asia and Its Critics: [W]hen 'Asian' nations react to 'the West's' image of Asia, they are usually referring to the ingrained and lingering fondness in the West for the 'Old Asia' .... [I]t is as the New Asia that they prefer to be known. The New Asia embodies a changed and dynamic image of Asia, and the perception in the New Asia is that any deviation from this image is dated, obsolete even, and prevents a proper and dynamic interpretation of new, changed circumstances.! If the colonial past denies Asia its originality -and at the same time its Asianness -then it is up to Asian academics to study anew the region and its past. This is the starting point for Asian (academic) indigenization.
The rhetoric of East Asia's2 academic regionalism is located in subjectively defined space. The 'New Asia' discourse is generally silent on criteria that may constitute (a part of) Asia as a region: 'cultural homogeneity' or geographical "objectivities" such as natural boundaries. Bjorn Hettne and Frederik Soderbaum describe this process as a geographical area's transformation "from a passive object to an active subject capable of articulating the interests of the emerging region." 3 'Asia' becomes what Gavan McCormack calls "a fantastic ideological construct without racial and cultural meaning,,4 connoting subjective experience of spatial affiliation. Cultural homogeneity can, in the end, be endorsed through the discourse, as a particular community is imagined as a "community of faith." Academic imaginations can be a powerful tool in this process.
Below I examine activities of not only indigenous Asian scholars but also some Western academics that have been based in East Asia for decades. Holding professorships in the region, some have contributed to the discourse as authoritative and powerful outsiders. "If regions are imagined constructs, then no one does a better job of offering legitimacy to the act of imagining than the historian who can claim familiarity with an era long gone by."s

The Roots of ASEAN
Kenneth R. Hall's recent article in the Asian Journal of Social Science describes pre-colonial Southeast Asia's regional interactions. In the Strait of Malaka region "there was a sense of regional self-confidence and progress among societies who had enjoyed over two hundred years of widespread socio-economic success.,,6 The implication is that ASEAN is but a contemporary re-incarnation of regionalism.
As an academic writing on Southeast Asia, Hall belongs among those who "are more sensitive to indigenous language sources. They search for a people's sense of themselves, their identity, as rooted in and shaped by their perceptions of the past.,,7 By taking this stance, Hall distances himself from most twentieth century interpretations of Southeast Asia. Like many authors of the last decade, and as a world-systems researcher, Hall criticizes Euro-American "colonial social science" for reducing Southeast Asian facts to their relations to Sinic and Indic cultures. 8 Hall aims, then, to present his material from a Southeast Asian viewpoint. He employs in his argument historical records of the 'glorious' Majapahit kingdom of the fourteenth century and surrounding countries where he 'finds' a sense of regionness. There was a sense of commonality, his argument continues, among the "south seas" travelers: royal inter-marriages were frequent and rulers of the surrounding islands traced their ties to Majapahit.
Hall's 'findings' are similar to those of Anthony Reid, a historian who argues for Southeast Asia's distinctiveness. Among his writings, the regional history Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-168rf may be the best known. There Reid argues that trade and colonization established enduring structures within Southeast Asia, constituting the region's distinctiveness: [A]s the Indian Ocean became a Muslim lake in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, "lands below the winds" (tanah dibawah angin, in Malay) became the way Southeast Asia was distinguished (from India, the Middle East, and later Europe) in the ports of the region itself, and for Malay, Arab and Persian speakers more widely. This way of conceptualizing Southeast Asia was common among maritime peoples from Aceh to Manila and as far north as Siam and Cambodia. lo Thus Reid and Hall search for regional consciousness in "indigenous" sources. 'Correctly' interpreting pre-colonial Southeast Asia leads them to 'discover' trans-border cooperation and a sense of shared heritage in Southeast Asia centuries before ASEAN. Their arguments are constructed to project ASEAN's present to the Majapahit past, and document the continuity of region-ness from the fourteenth century to the present. Events such as the Pacific War and nationalism in Southeast Asia "interrupted and inhibited the natural tendency for neighbours to learn from each other.,,11 In a similar vein, Amitav Acharya in The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia argues that the region's cultural commonalities are reflected in the concepts used by Western scholars to describe pre-colonial Southeast Asia. O.W. WoIters's mandala, Tambiah's galactic polity and C. Geertz's theatre state point to 'indigenous' or 'regional' models of the state and inter-state relations that have little in common with territorially bounded Marxian and Weberian states. 12 Mandala, for instance, was used by Wolters to describe the system he found in the kingdoms of Srivijaya, Angkor, Ayudhya, and Majapahit, comprising concentric circles of lands under control of the king. These center-periphery relations as found in Southeast Asia were different from the model of, for instance, Northeast Asia, where boundaries were clearly articulated. 13 Similarly, the galactic polities system as described by Tambiah was a "center-oriented arrangement" in which domains and satellite regions "continually changed their affiliation according to the fortunes of war and diplomacy.,,14 Geertz's image of the theatre state refers to a system with overlapping territorial domains and weak internal political and administrative control.
15 Acharya argues that these three notions defining the nature of the state and interstate relations in Southeast Asia can be interpreted as representing a distinct regional pattern contributing to greater intra-regional homogeneity. Common cultural values and political consensus created by and through interacting mandalas formed a basis for regional identity. 16 Acharya, however, is not uncritical of these concepts invented by Western scholarship. He even acknowledges that these concepts are simplistically Orientalist: the image of the mandala as a "non-coercive cultural fonn of authority" portrays "an exotic, idealist, Orientalist construction of the Southeast Asian past." 17 Nevertheless, Acharya sees these concepts as forerunners to attempts in more recent times by Southeast Asian leaders to speak of an 'ASEAN Way' of international conduct, which emphasizes consensus-building and conflict-avoidance. And just as the mandala, the galactic polity and the theatre state could be the basis of an imagined Southeast Asian community during the classical period, the 'ASEAN Way' has been at the core of efforts to build a Southeast Asian regional identity in the modern era. IS Studies of pre-colonial Southeast Asia's regional past are thus deeply political: they confInn ASEAN's legacy and significance to the world. They also prove the "naturalness" of Southeast Asia, countering the popular interpretation that the region was christened in World War 11 by the American Southeast Asian Command. Southeast Asia, then, is not and never has been the product of colonialism or outside forces, but is, on the contrary, found as early as the fourteenth century. The discovery of early conceptualizations of the region and the scrupulous collection of facts representing regional interactions shift the importance of the early kingdoms from national to regional histories, empowering in this way today's ASEAN.

One Southeast Asia
The intellectual project 'One Southeast Asia' is best understood within the context of promoting ASEAN expansion. ASEAN's five founding members (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand) welcomed Brunei in 1984 and Vietnam in 1995; the admission of Bunna and Laos in 1997 and Cambodia in 1999 completed the 'One Southeast Asia'. A post-Cold War opportunity to end decades of ideological confrontation and extend 'peace and prosperity' across the region, ASEAN expansion was celebrated in the rhetoric of finally (re)establishing Southeast Asian unity.
The challenge of admitting new members invited academic involvement. The joint efforts of think tanks and institutes resulted in the organization of several conferences, tens of papers, a volume of edited conference presentations, and the fonnation of the group Citizens of Southeast Asia, which counted among its members many prominent scholars. The latter group, convening in Manila in partnership with the Philippine government, produced two documents: The Institute for Policy Research (Kuala Lumpur), one of the major actors of the 'One Southeast Asia' enterprise, produced in 1996 the report Dictate of Partnership: Cambodia, Laos and ASEAN in One Southeast Asia. The Institute announced among its goals the rediscovering and recovering of "our histories, cultural and religious heritage.,,21 Jakarta's Center for Strategic and International Studies, organized in 1996 an international seminar titled One Southeast Asia in A New Regional and International Setting. A book published the following year inherited the seminar's heading; 'One Southeast Asia' hereafter became a new rhetorical device for ASEAN next to its "unity in diversity." The strategies of locating Southeast Asia in time and space is evident in almost every essay in One Southeast Asia in A New Regional and International Setting. A uniform mental map of the times "far back in history" when Asia "had trade routes that brought diverse peoples into contact with each other,,22 reappear time and again, as powerful contrasts to the period after World War 11 when the emphasis was "upon separate economic systems, with a strong element of protectionism,,23 and when "conflicts and confrontation among Southeast Asians has been exacerbated by the interplay of foreign interests in the region. ,,24 Achieving 'One Southeast Asia', then, emerges as an idealized and historically grounded vision serving very practical purposes: A more interrelated One Southeast Asia presents new opportunities for us in the region to fashion our relations with the major external powers and shape our own future. For we recognize that a primary cause of regional insecurity and instability has been major power rivalry and intervention dating back to the colonial era... A One Southeast Asia that is not only politically coordinated, but economically coordinated will be in a better position to bargain in an increasingly competitive international economic environment. 25

The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Project
Inter-Asia Cultural Studies has emerged as a part of a movement for the ongoing construction and reconstruction of critical Inter-Asia subjectivities. It gives a long overdue voice to the intellectual communities in the region and recognizes its own existence as an attempt to continue critical lines of practices. The journal's aim is to shift existing sites of identification and to multiply alternative frames of reference: it is committed to publish work not only out of 'Asia' but also other coordinates such as the 'third world'. Its political agenda is to move across: state/nationallsub-regional divisions, scholarship and activism, modalities/forms of knowledge, and rigid identity politics of any form. 26

---Editorial Statement, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies
Inter-Asia 27 deserves attention as a project uniting scholars: Shamsul A.B., Chua Beng Huat, Chen Kuan-Hsing, Leo Ching, Partha ChatteIjee, and many others. Inter-Asia or the Movements project counts among its main activities journal publishing28 and conference organization: the first Inter-Asia conference was held in Taipei ("Problematizing Asia", 1998) and the second in Fukuoka ("Transitional Era, Transformative Work", 2000).
As a post-colonial critical inquiry, Inter-Asia seeks to avoid speaking 'for Asia' -its political agenda is formulated in ways not to exclude Asian pluralities. Attempts towards inclusiveness are demonstrated in the journal's readiness to translate articles from Asian languages: "We are obliged to do justice to all 'Asian' languages.,,29 Pledged to avoid "rigid identity politics," Inter-Asia's Asia is spatially unbounded: the AsiaiPacific, South Asia and Australia all find a ready home. To further avoid anything reminiscent of the "colonial structure" of area studies,30 Indian and Australian scholars are often among the published authors.
What makes Inter-Asia different from other journals based in Asia, focused on Asia, and its sister cultural studies journal positions: east asia cultures critique, is its openly articulated political agenda. Besides the "decolonization project" to "deconstruct Cold War mental structures" and increase "South-South" interaction, Inter-Asia aims to critically assess the concepts "Asia", "Third World", and "modernity." The critical assessment of 'Asia' is of particular importance: the journal's aim to resist the dominating modes of theorizing and rhetoric of the 'Asian miracle' creates discursive space for critique and self-reflection.
Unwilling to reduce 'Asia' to pure 'nativism', the Movements project asks how colonialism-nationalism-nativism shaped 'Asia'. Sun Ge's article "How Does Asia Mean" concentrated on the historical "question of Asia." It was followed by responses from Rustom Bharucha and Satish Deshpande reflecting on the meaning of asking the "Asia question," why it was asked, by whom and what others in Inter-Asia had to say about it.
Deshpande in her response to Sun Ge argues for the need to intensify "inter-Asian intellectual traffic." 'Asia sentiment' among theorists arises from "being, or more accurately, 26 "Editoral Statement", Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1 (1),2000,5-6, p. 5. 27 Inter-Asia cultural project has a website at www.inter-asia.org 28 Inter-Asia Cultural studies is published by Routledge 3 times a year, starting from April/2000. 29 Chen, Kuan-Hsing and Chua Beng Huat, "An Introduction", Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2000, 1(1): 9-12, p. 12. 30 Harry Harootunian and Naoki Sakai, "Dialogue: Japan Studies and Cultural Studies", in Positions: East Asia cultures critique, 1999,7 (2): 593-647, p. 596. of wishing to become, an 'Asian,.,,3) Just as Indian and Japanese academics in the past invoked 'Asia' from very different contexts -thus inventing the 'Asia' of their choice 32 -Oeshpande wants to clarify "how 'Asia' has come to mean whatever it has in my own context.,,33 The common 'wish' to 'become Asian' in the many corners of geographical and cultural/intellectual Asia necessitates continued reflection on "where we might be placed, what we might sound like to others, and what we may reasonably expect from them.,,34 Given that inter-Asian interactions have to be established against the heavy odds of prior indifference and ignorance, can we not try to maximize the leverage offered by those areas of our intellectual formation where we do have something in common? In short, can we take advantage of the fact that we have all read many of the same texts, especially in the field of theory, even if these texts have originated in the West?35 Recovering the "internalized West" (Ashis Nandy) within 'Asia' is the responsibility of 'activist scholars' when contextualizing 'Asia' in the present and historicizing its different careers.36 This re-positioning makes it clear that any involvement with 'Asia' is only a type of involvement that can and should be located.
Rustom Bharucha in his response to Sun Ge rhetorically asks: "Under the omnipresent sign of 'Asia', what is not available for academic consumption?" There is nothing innocent about 'Asia', he argues, or its cultural heritage celebrated as 'reborn' in conferences such as the Rebirth of the Traditional Arts held in Taipei in 2000 37 . "Manufacturing Asia" in countless 'traditional arts' workshops will not contribute to (evenly) embracing Asia's diversity. Only open, responsible inter-Asian dialogue can be antidotes to the monologues of early 20 th century Pan-Asianism and inter-Asian spectacles of "traditional arts" fairs and conferences. For Bharucha, the framing, marketing and selling of "Asian traditions" by East Asian professionals represent new imbalances of power across Asia. 38 Bharucha also confronts 'Asia's' localization in East Asia. He wonders why 'Asia' remains a "non-issue" in public debates on cultural identity in contemporary India -in stark contrast to the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore's well-known engagement with 'Asia' in his intercultural dialogue with the Japanese art historian Okakura Tenshin at the turn of the century.39 Okakura's most famous pan-Asian mantra "Asia is one" was written in Calcutta. Why then, the author asks, does "Asia's pre-eminence ... deepen as one proceeds eastwards, from Malaysia to Singapore to Hong Kong to JapanT.4O If this is the case, 'Asia' is not one, as Okakura thought, but many, and some, depending on how they are positioned in reference to East Asia, are branded "more" Asian than others. Bharucha's question is directed to those responsible for this branding: [W]e need to question very stringently the framing of Inter-Asia cultural production within the inequities of global capital in Asia itself. To what extent is the framing of these spectacles [traditional arts festivals] dependent on particular policies of funding, which have their own agendas and territorial biases?41 If Sun Ge' s article was meant to historicize 'Asia', both Indian authors tend to 'rescue' 'Asia' from history and 'tradition.' They place it at the center of a continuum of contexts, assessing controversies of earlier pan-Asianisms and their re-appearance in contemporary debates as a means of ranking locales in Asia according to their levels of 'Asianness. ' Asia as method: the ambiguities of de-colonization Among the critical aims of Inter-Asia is the search for reference points for Asian Studies researchers. Nostalgia for an indigenous perspective and fatigue with the 'West' are expressed in the Introduction to the first volume: Comparisons have always been made, where the 'West' has been the frame of reference. Now, it is perhaps the time to multiply and to construct alternative frames of reference, and the 'third world', very much like 'Asia', is a promising possibility for this reframing. 42 One wonders what reference frames linked to 'Asia' and the 'Third World' imply. How can an essentialized category such as 'Asia' escape hegemonic claims? A. Chun and A.B. Shamsul write in the Inter-Asia volume dedicated to Asian academia: In spite of its anti-colonial intentions, indigenization has tended to contribute more to the closure of multiple narratives and identities than their emancipation. The turn toward native studies of Oriental ism and social science ironically has a dangerous ring to it. 43 According to the authors, the tendency to 'indigenize' social science in Asia is closely affiliated with state-directed nationalism, where Asian scholars are situated within "local institutional frameworks of power.'.44 In other words, the promotion of 'native' visions has 39 Ibid., p. 152. 40  itself being trapped in the imaginary of what Rob Wilson calls "another transnational and transculturaI AsiaIPacific, not some ocean-submerged continent bespeaking exploration and expansion for marines, politicians and tourists."so As yet another imaginary, where does 'decolonization' begin, and when does it end?

Concluding remarks
This paper showcased some of the ways in which academics, across time and space, have thought of 'Asianness.' I attempted to show that the language of 'Asianness' has many tongues, and that the culture of 'Asianness' is, more often than not, a stage upon which academic elites perform their distinctive roles in "New Asia" spectacles. In this process, scholarly arguments have come to serve political agendas while academics have transformed scholar1y engagement into political action. What does the future hold for the New Asia discourse? A major shortcorning, to date, has been the self-referential nature of the debate. Comparison with other supranationaI identity building projects -pan-Africanism and the EU for example -may yie1d interesting insights, both theoretically and methodologically. It may yet encourage citizens, scholars, and political leaders to critically engage in the projects of their regionaI 'others', the better to understand their own agency within inter-twined, trans-regionaI futures.