ARIF DIRLIK ON EAST ASIAN

IDENTITY
A Paper Summary

DECEMBER 12, 2019

BRIGHT MHANGO (D2019008)
Shandong University
In his 1999 paper titled: Culture Against History? The Politics of East Asian

Identity1, Arif Dirlik examined the changes in attitudes towards the concept of

cultural identity and especially zoomed in on the notion of East Asian Identity.

This paper will try to summarize his core points and outline these aforementioned

attitudes.

The Past and the West, Then and Now

Dirlik starts by declaring that cultural identity is tied to Euro-American

colonialism which first manifested itself in the notion of modernisation and

morphed into globalisation in the post-colonial era.

Dirlik states that independence movements were the first to seek out and define

their own identities which were linked to their independence struggles and after

the end of the independence struggles, a new way of defining cultural identity

was needed:

“National Liberation movement are not of the past and, so apparently art ether

solutions to the question of cultural identity offered by the national liberation

leaders and theorists from Frantz Fannon to Abdallah Laroui, Ernesto Che

Guevara to Mao Zedong. But the question of cultural identity is still very much

there: Indeed, has come to the foreground…” pp.169

1
Dirlik, Arif. 1999. “Culture Against History? The Politics of East Asian Identity.” Development and Society
28(2): 168-90.

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China, Globalization, And the Disavowal of History

Now, states Dirlik, the question of cultural identity is not only no longer linked

to the independent movements such as Marxism but is also no longer seen in

modernity terms but rather wrapped in ‘the language of globalisation that has

replaced modernisation as a paradigm for change.’

Globalisation, however, didn’t not over the solutions that lacked in the past.

While Modernisation paradigm was criticised as Eurocentric, its successor

globalisation cannot explain why the world is getting ‘fragmented in so many

ways that few dare to speak these days of universalism…’ p.171

On China, Dirlik traced how the Communist Revolution and its fall out relegated

Confucian values which had before that point been a big part of Chinese identity

to the museum (p.171) and then in an ironic twist took him out of the museum

again. This, Dirlik argues, is not because of the passing of revolutions but rather

is a reaction of globalization replacing modernization as a paradigm for change.

The Confucian revival also comes at a time when other identities are also getting

assertive. Dirlik lists the Hindu, Islamic, Turkish and Buddhist identities and

states that these bring the idea of ‘Asia’ into question.

Dirlik, while acknowledging the longstanding quest for identity in East Asia,

postulates that the economic boom of Asian nations, multiculturalism and cultural

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domination by the West and Western multinationals have all helped foster the

quest for Identity in East Asia.

“I have argued elsewhere that while Confucian revival may express long-standing

grievances against the Eurocentric suppression of East Asian pasts, it has been

empowered in its most recent manifestation by the economic success of East

Asian societies…” (p.175)

Dirlik however in all in the West’s shadow: All this suggests one thing, he writes:

“that even at the moment of a seeming assertion on an autonomous self against

the West, the West has been very much part on an Asian self-discovery either as

an active or an absent presence” (p.176)

Beyond Orientalism

The author also alludes to Orientalism, the stereotypical portrayal of Asia, as

informing the geography of the Asian reveal citing that the areas that were the

products of EuroAmerican spatializations and the areas deemed strategic to the

United States after the Second World War happen to be the areas that have seen

a lot of the revival.

Orientalism continues to influence scholarship on East Asia, argues, Dirlik and

bemoans the fact that what is called East, West, Northeast and Southeast and the

clear boundaries that separate them have been defined from outside.

Globalization and the Conquest of the Third World

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And it was that outside that inadvertently gave rise to Asianness. Asians didn’t

know they lived in Asia until they saw the European maps and for Chinese, the

world Asia was introduced to them by Jesuits only in the 17th Century. Soon,

Japan and Canton in China were hubs of radicals defending Asianness with

Japanese imperialism even finding favour in Asia in the 1930s using tropes

relating to defending Asia against Western Imperialism. (p. 179)

Dirlik goes on to argue that even after Asians claimed Asianness for themselves

they suspiciously still toe the Orientalist line. He gave the example of how China

is described as Confucian when it has Buddhism and at the time, he wrote the

paper movements like the now out-lawed Falun Gong - hardly a monolith.

For Dirlik, Globalisation is but a ruse to mask US economic and cultural

hegemony.

East Asian Alternatives?

Having deconstructed the idea of Asia and East Asia and having equated it to a

mere ‘Intellectual Praxis,’ Dirlik says the issue is not about deciding whether

there is an Asia but rather who is to define what Asia or East Asia is.

Since he has already proven that the current definitions of Asia are rooted in

EuroAMerican colonialism, Dirlik says defining Asia as being vis-à-vis the West

doesn’t suffice and can only lead to more social injustice. (p.187-188)

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In his conclusion Dirlik says if the Idea of Asia is to be reimagined it has to

transcend not just Western but also what he called Self-Orientalism which came

out of the nationalist movements and which lumped imagined areas and cultures

as monoliths.

Instead Dirlik says there is need for a “reconceptualization of the very notion of

regional formations- from the ground up, in accordance with everyday needs and

interactions that point to diverse historical experiences and trajectories, which

have been rendered invisible in both Orientalist and nationalist mappings of the

world.” (p188)

Reference

Dirlik, Arif. 1999. “Culture Against History? The Politics of East Asian Identity.” Development and

Society 28(2): 168-90.