The Cultures of Area Studies in the United States Author(s): Vicente L. Rafael Source: Social Text, No.

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The Cultures of Area Studies in the United States

VicenteL. Rafael
of Asian literatures in UnitedStatesuniIn a recentessayon theteaching abouttheroleofarea studiesin segregating the versities, Rey Chow writes cultures intoadministratively studyof non-European expedient programs. She goes on to maketheincreasingly thatarea commonplaceobservation studiesprograms are moreoften thannot sitesfortheproduction of conthe nation-state versionsof Orientalism. as the By privileging temporary unitof analysis, area studiesconceive"areas" as iftheywere elementary the natural-or at least,historically forthe connecessary-formations tainment of differences within and betweencultures. is Equallysignificant the tendency themselves to dividethe area's amongmanyarea specialists into a "classical" period whollydistinct fromthe "modern" era. history of organizing Such historical divisionshave the effect academic labor by "classical" to the the humanities and the "modern"era to period assigning the social sciences.' If it is possible,then,to speak of the culturesof area studiesin the of themas ensemblesof knowledges United States,one mightthink and on and formulated practicesgrounded specificlinguistic competencies boundaries. Furthermore, such within,as well as across, disciplinary it presumesare underwritand the disciplinary demarcations grounding ten by a discourseof liberalpluralism.For thisreason, area studiesnot different versions of Orientalism;they also produce by only reiterate necessitymultiplerepudiationsof these versions. What is significant about area studies,then,is not so much theunsurprising pointthatthey itis thatsincetheend ofWorldWar are tiedto Orientalist legacies;rather, into largerinstitutional II, area studies have been integrated networks, to from universities that have made foundations, ranging possible the North of a Americanstyleof knowing, one thatis ordered reproduction towardthe proliferation and containment of Orientalisms and theircriit is a styleof knowing thatis fundamentally tiques.Furthermore, depento theextent denton, precisely thatit is critical ofcorof,theconjunction state and the flexible porate funding, support, managerialsystemsof characteristic of liberalpluralism. university governance In this essay, I want to look into some of the rhetoricaround the of area studiesin the late 1940s and pointout the waysby development whichit was linkedto a largerCold War liberalprojectforthe conceptu-

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I thenwant to show how alizationof global as well as local differences. of liberalarea studiesregarding some of the assumptions the production of knowledge, the place of theory, and the nationallocationsof theircirculation have been reworked and problematized withinthe contextof SoutheastAsian studies-the "area" in whichmost of my own workis assessments of such regional set-with reference to recent in the programs I willbe raisinga seriesof questionsaround United States.In particular, betweenthe agencies and locationsof SoutheastAsian the relationship the studyof areas within studieswhichmight waysof resituating suggest thebroaderconcernsof cultural studiestoday. I should note at the outsetthatthisessay neither to reconattempts of area studies in the United structa comprehensive history programs I be the States (such an attempt would, think, impossible, given radically unevendevelopments and thecomplexand amongthedifferent programs vexedrelationship between such programs and theareasthemselves) often nor at any point suggestsprogrammatic instituchangeswithinexisting tionalresources(libraries, translation etc., languageinstruction, projects, but separate consideration).Instead, my all of which meritimportant in the focuson a rhetorical accountof area studiesarisesfrom myinterest in a War and stakes in specializations post-Cold changing regional of and era when the local are converycategories post-civilrights global and reinvented and whenassuming a singular, unified stantly renegotiated has become politipositionfromwhichto ask about such developments and structurally callyunfeasible impossible.Hence, the necessarily fragof this and its more circumscribed and nature mentary essay provisional how theemergence ofmodernarea studiesmight tell projectof suggesting ifyou willus how differences have been accountedfor-domesticated, withinthe liberalcultureof the U.S. academy in the latterhalf of the continues to shape critical twentieth and howthatculture century, predicamentswhichmanyof us (and it is precisely thequestionof this"we" that is unceasingly in liberalsociety)inhabit today. problematic 2 on the One of the most instructive and prototypical pronouncements in theimmediate need forregionalspecializations War post-World urgent II era is RobertHall's Area Studies:With to Their ImpliSpecialReference in theSocial Sciences.2 at the cations Hall, a politicalscientist forResearch in modern was of who University Michigan Japan, part of a specialized researchteam thatconducteda surveyof area studiesprogramsin the United Stateswiththesupportof the Social Science ResearchCouncil in of area studiesrestson three 1947. His plea forthe institutionalization with the traditionalhumanitiesfields,their reasons: their continuity

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sites of interdisciplinary consensus betweenthe promiseforpromoting humanities and the social sciences,and their usefulness fortraining good citizensto safeguardAmericannationalinterests in the aftermath of a of future ones. globalwar and in anticipation to receivedideas, Hall arguesthat"WorldWar II was not Contrary the motherof area studies."Their real forerunner was classical studies, withits focus on ancientGreece and Rome. What linksthe two is their research. But while stresson linguistic competenceas thekeyto scholarly in the civilization of the dead, modern area classical studies trafficked associastudieswould deal withthe societiesof theliving.Throughtheir as the tion withsocial science disciplines, theywould come to function of classical studies. Hall Indeed, contemporary quotes John equivalent a relaStuartMill's defenseof the studyof Greekand Latin to establish tionof successionbetweenancientand modernarea studies: the languageof a people,we neverreally knowtheir Without knowing ofcharacter; wedo possess andunless this their their type feelings, thoughts, of someother we remain, to thehourof peoplethanourselves, knowledge half ... Sincewecannot divest ourintellects ourdeath, with expanded. only of preconceived is no meansof eliminating their ourselves there notions, thedifferently colored ofother butbyfrequently influence peousing glasses arethebest.3 ofother as themost nations, different, ple;andthose in about theexpansionof self-understanding rhetoric Here, thehumanist and throughthe learningof languages, allegorizedas the means with becomes a basis forarguingthe legitiwhichto alterone's visual fields, a self as thehumanities weremeantto cultivate macyof area studies.4 Just to transmit thelegacyof thepast,area studieswould thatwas authorized develop a body of elite scholarscapable of producingknowledgeabout othernationsto the benefitof "our" nation.The pedagogical value of the intellectual area studies lay preciselyin shattering isolationismof in thesame waythatclassicalstudiesin Mill's era resulted in a Americans a to of farbreak with "Britishprovincialism," the leading acquisition "Is a in there not our own Hall similarity positiontoday?" flungempire. asks. "Do we need those 'differently coloredglasses' to livewiselyin our new 'one world'?"5 demandedwhat Hall calls Living in thisnew worldorder,however, the "total knowledge of areas." Fixated on philology,the traditional their"vast accumulationof knowlhumanities had failedto synthesize had thebenefit of thesocial sciedge." Modern area studies,by contrast, ence disciplines, linesof approachneverbeforeavailable" which"offered for the task of obtaining"precise knowledgeof all otherlands and all of area studiesthuslay in the interotherpeoples."6The modernization

Just as the humanities were meantto cultivate a selfthatwas to authorized transmit the legacyofthe past,area studies would develop a body ofelitescholars capable of producing knowledge about other nationsto the of benefit "our"nation.

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to organize vention ofthesocial sciencesand their data, capacity disparate and map their abouttheir differences, significance, generalize regularities, and transformations. In completing thetaskof thehumanities, modernarea studieswould have to depend on social sciencedisciplines formethodological and theoretical This was because area studieswereseen as "new arrivals," vectors. as yet lacking"solidity"and a "scholasticcore." Like new immigrants, and guidanceuntilthey could be assimtheyrequired supervision vigilant fieldof the disciplines ilatedinto the epistemological and the governing in a belatedand secondary relastructures ofhigher education.Positioned on theone hand,and to theexigencies tionto thedisciplines, ofuniversity area studieswould eventually come to realizetheir policies,on the other, within fullpotential: thatof "bringing aboutthecross-fertilization [sic]the thegap between thesocialsciencesand the social sciencesand ofbridging thefundamental in theinterest of "working humanistic toward disciplines" of all totality knowledge."7 Hall thus posits a reciprocalbut asymmetrical between relationship the variousprograms area studiesand the disciplines. Surveying existing in 1947, he attributes the emergent interest in area studiesto a "deep and fundamental dissatisfaction" withconventional researchapproaches and the "sterility" of current methods.Developingin increasing isolation from one another and prey to overspecialization marked by extreme the disciplines-those "verticalpillarsof knowledge"-were abstraction, themselves in dangerof cutting offfromone anotherand fromthe real zones and vales of ignorance" had fallen world. As a result,"twilight and society.Caught among the disciplinesand betweenthe university men came to resemble"nuns withinthe iron cages of theirdisciplines, and [who] fretnot in theirnarrowcells." Threatenedwithintellectual to were in numbers men social emasculation, scholarly turning increasing and their studies to rescue them area disciplines.8 Envisionedin part as a genderedresponseto a perceivedcrisisin Americanhigher the drift education,area studieswerewaysof managing and discontent practitioners: amongdisciplinary thetotal to an areawill notonly thenow The hopeis that approach helpfill of theparticular but also bring aboutan exchange unknown interstices, ofthedifferent to thegeneral andparticular disciplines, knowledge insights ofresearch.9 enrichment Interdisciplinary by vocation,area studieswould providethereadyvessel formanlyinterdisciplinary As such,theywould providethe camaraderie. sitesfortesting and theraw materials withwhich disciplinary hypotheses oftheory. The "homogeneity" to fueltheproduction and boundednessof 94 L. Rafael Vicente

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an area would providecommongroundfor"cooperative attack"and thus incitement to energizethe disciplines.Area studies for the intellectual witha mediating werethuscharged thedisciplines function, "nourishing" touchwiththe "real world." so as to bringthemin better of knowledge via theunion of masculinesocial sciThe engendering area studiesis imagedby Hall as the comingtogether ence and feminine out of theirindividual to workas a "team": of scholarsbreaking pursuits a veritable each withhis own specializedtools,prepared armyof experts, of an area. Such teamwork would to do theirshare in the totalmastery amid as a "common consensus differences, disciplinary forge body of upon whichall could agree" would serveas thebasis of future knowledge one worldwar and in the Area studiesconceivedshortly after research.10 midstof the Cold War thus furnished a screenforre-creating the sense union of In men. and sensationof a regimented yetegalitarian doing so, theliberalideal ofmanagedpluthediscourseon area studiesreproduced of the world withinthe flexible ralism that would bind the diversity As of and "The greater manpractitioners." Hall writes: authority experts limited should be an of data on areas to ageability advantage quicker studiescome to coverall areas theywill research.... As thesehorizontal supply a trulysolid base upon whichuniversalsocial science laws and probabilities may be built."'2Which is to say thatarea studieshold the thedivisionof laboramongdisciplines, for potential reorganizing thereby theirproductionon a global scale. From being new immirejuvenating the "soft,""uncertain," and "experimenminorities, grantsor emergent tal" set of practices known as area studies would become, under the in layingout the spaces patronageof the social sciences,a juniorpartner forthedisciplinary of the world.'3 mapping In proposingthe institutionalization of area studies,Hall is insistent on one thing:that area studies be subordinateto the epistemological and thattheydeferto the managerial of the disciplines proceauthority Because they are "almost the sole guardians of dures of departments. the departments and disciplines are needed to constandards," scholarly tain the "horizontal"and potentially open-endedspread of area studies. of specialistswith "dual competencies"-or Hall envisionsthe training "dual citizenship," as he sometimes calls it-in an area studiesfieldand in in graduateprograms, a recognizeddiscipline.Particularly area studies shouldbe regarded as an "additionalcompetency, not an alternative one" to disciplinary While establishing consensusamong disciplines, training. area studieswere also meantto redrawagain and again the boundaries betweenthem.In maintaining area studiesthus distinctions, disciplinary also retained forthemselves a relation of dependency to such disciplines.14 of differences-between then,the"integration" Througharea studies, disciplines,global regions,and nation-states-could be accomplished intheU.S. AreaStudies 95

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Mostarea studies inthe programs United States were conceived in at a moment American history when liberal for ambitions a enforcing globalpeace for necessary capitalist expansion coincided withliberal anxieties over desegregation, spurred bythe successesof the civil rights movement.

or disrupting their distinctiveness theirsovereignty. without Simaltering workcan be carriedout and consensusreachedwithcollaborative ilarly, of individual or the sanctity out abandoningthe privileges of scholarship Hall's and liberal careers. thus integrationist logic philosophy professional of a set ofhierarchies and a field worktoward ofunequal thereproduction relations. We can see thistendencyin his emphasison fieldwork as a crucial of area studies The education envisioned training. graduate component by and elementary Hall begins withlanguage training with an familiarity to gain disciplinary area, followed by the studyof social science theories over a period of about threeyears.This trajectory carries competency in the field,duringwhichthe studentis over into a year-long residency As such,he converts the fieldintoa able to testtheories againstrealities. as well as intoa stagein the passage towardcredentialization. laboratory formedunitswithfixedbordersJustas the areas are regardedas fully stable pluralities availableforstandardized management-so is the field of knowledges node in a network and ritualsof professeen as a distinct is intotheuniversionalization amongscholars.The field thusintegrated area studies,but only as a tokenin a generaleconomyof sitythrough function of area studies,thatof segregating motives. The "conservative" is coincide with their made to thatof differences, function, "progressive" set of the relationship within a flexible among differences systematizing underthesupervision of experts bound bythecomdisciplinary practices mon pursuitof "totalknowledge." It is useful to stresshere that most area studies programsin the in American whenlibUnitedStateswereconceivedat a moment history a globalpeace necessary forcapitalist eralambitions forenforcing expansion coincided withliberalanxietiesover desegregation, spurredby the movement. successes of the civilrights Indeed, the passage of the single forthefunding of of area studies mostimportant federal legislation piece the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958, was programs, who fearedthatit would held up by a numberof southern congressmen on all levels of federal intervention intensify schoolingand thus further of the because overthe hastendesegregation. Only generalized hysteria of the Soviets, as represented by the putativetechnologicaladvances did liberalCold Warideologymanage of the Sputniksatellites, launching fearsand allowfortheenactment and subseto containsouthern racialist NDEA.15 of the extensions quent The advocacyofarea studiesin thelate 1940s and the 1950s was thus social conditionsof the nation.Liberal implicatedin the contradictory African Americans and otherminoritized discourseregarded populations as "problems"to whicha "science of society"might providesolutions.16 withvariousfoundaTo an influential sectorof social scientists working
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wereobjectsofanalysis and targets of examination tions,such populations and testing insofar as theywerealso subjectsof a universal juridicalorder as citizenswho may be equal to, yet were culturally distinct fromthe whitemajority. on area the discourse studies areas positioned Analogously, the of as integral the to, yetultimately separatefrom, precincts disciplifrom institutional affiland segregated scholarsand their naryprofessions iations. Hence, the incorporationof area studies as managed sites of of producing a field of exclusions. For educationalso had theeffect higher within the interdisciplinary the of area of liberal notion studies,the optic area and presumably itspopulationsremained at a saferemove, managed of the social sciences into stagesof comparabledevelby the operations or discrete cultural realms.In thisway, opment, groupings, ethnolinguistic thearea understudy forthosein theUnitedStates became an understudy who remained ofbut on theperiphery oftheacademy, within sight figures who servedto incitedisciplinary interests whilecallingforthesupervision of trainedexperts.17 It is within the contextof thisliberalresponseto the new nationsin theworldand thenew subjectswithin thenationthatwe can understand Hall's third claimfortheimportance of area studies:thatthey wouldserve the nationalinterest. a of area who could By producing body specialists serve as teachers,area studieswould expose undergraduates and other nonspecialiststo other peoples. By teaching survey courses such as "world" or "Asian" civilizations, such scholarswould contribute to the missionof generaleducation:to forman "informed citizenry" capable of the keeping peace: Could we arrive morequickly at a durablepeace and maintain it more if we knew better the nations and with which we must deal? securely people doubt that total is the to direct ... Can weno longer peace counterparttotal war? A vast and continued in all interest other landsandin all understanding other is if are to we that peoples mandatory gain peace.18 a "vastbody of knowledge" about otherpeoples,area studies By creating are invested witha nationalist wishfulness. The disciplinedstudyof others ultimately worksto maintaina nationalorderthought to be coterminous witha global one. Area studiesthushave a civic vocation:to make Americansskilledmanagersof foreignand domesticaffairs.Compretheworldwithin a nationalist framework thatis also underwritten hending liberal consensus,area studieswould help produce a "bettercitiby a differences "out there"as wellas "in here."'19 In zenry"able to coordinate thisliberalaccount,then,area studiesare pressedto perform a chain of while discriminating mediations,integrating among the disciplinesand betweenthe disciplinesand the field,the university and the nation,and AreaStudies intheU.S. 97

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the local and the global. As such, rationales forthe institutionalization of area studiestendedto be complicitous withpostwarnationalist appeals. Such appeals hingednot onlyon the disciplinary containment of a "red menace" abroad and at home but also on the neutralization and assimilationof an emergent "rainbowmenace" within thenationitself.20 The liberal projectof harnessing area studiesforthe sake of "wagingpeace" as the equivalentto wagingwar entailedthe cultivation of interdisciplinary transferable flexibility: techniquesformanagingthe politicsof difference to anypartof theworld,including, notcoincidentally, "our" own.

3
Some forty-five about years afterRobert Hall's brave new predictions area studies, a seriesofessaysaddressing thefateofone sucharea,Southeast Asian studies,was publishedby the AssociationforAsian Studies. EntitledSoutheast Asian Studiesin theBalance: Reflections America, from thisvolumebringstogether some of the papers givenat an SSRC-sponsored conference in Madison, Wisconsin,in 1990 thatwas attended by In what follows,I some of the most prominent scholarsin the field.21 wantto pursue some of the recurring themesin thesepaperswhichsuggest some of the waysthatthe practiceof area studieshas become more in recent years.Alongtheway,I wantto tease out whatI take problematic to be an implicit thoughrepressedtermin the discussionof the current of area studies:the presenceof whatI will call an and future formations which calls into question the integrationist immigrant imaginary, logic in liberalconceptions of area studies. inherent It is important to pointout theparticular context oftheconpolitical These assessments of the ferenceat whichthese papers were delivered. stateof SoutheastAsian studieswere in part constrained by the need to of research and university continued justify bytheFord funding programs of ensuring Foundationand the SSRC. It was perhapsthisrequirement of changthe institutional of SoutheastAsian studiesin thelight viability thatin partshapedthe toneand ing budgetpriorities amongfoundations substanceof the conference to balance, as it papers. Thus the attempts of Southeast Asian studies between a senseof crisis, the fate were, present on theother, on theone hand,and a set ofpossibleresolutions, tendto be set by existing situatedwiththe limits(both fiscaland epistemological) foundations. Asian Studiesin the Two themesrun through the papers in Southeast future is profound the Balance. The first regarding immediate pessimism of SoutheastAsian studiesin the United States.The second is cheerful optimismon the prospectsof a SoutheastAsian studiescarriedout by in the in theWestbutbased in thecountries scholars"trained "indigenous

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Such indigenousscholarship would be written in regionitself. primarily and would be geared towarda local audience,but at the the vernacular same timeit wouldbe translatable and transferable to a globalreadership. forexample,showsthatwhilethemembership CharlesHirschman, of the AssociationforAsian Studies (AAS) has gone up over the last two as "SoutheastAsianists" themselves decades, those membersidentifying have steadilydeclined from713 in 1978 to 528 in 1989.22Hirschman thinks thatthe declinein the quantity and possiblyqualityof American lies in the nationaldecline of graduateproSoutheastAsian scholarship decline gramsas a wholesincethe 1970s and in theevenmorespectacular of theUnitedStatesas a worldpowerbeginning withtheend of theVietnam War. Subordinate to the "core" disciplinesand deemed less important in relationto more "developed" areas of study,such as East Asia, Latin America,the Middle East, and South Asia, SoutheastAsia proin most North American gramshave tendedto be doublymarginalized universities. As such, theyhave been particularly hard hit by changing worldpolitical economic and altered fedconditions, recessions, recurring eral and university spendingpriorities. the growingimporHowever,Hirschmanis also hopefulregarding tance of scholarly workwritten by SoutheastAsians themselves, manyof whomhave had graduatetraining in theUnitedStates.He pointsout the factthatas of 1989, the majority-abouttwo-thirds-ofPh.D. startling dissertations written in this country witha SoutheastAsian focus have been by SoutheastAsian scholarsand concludesthatthemostimportant worksin the area will be written, if theyaren'talready,by those living there. Charles Keyes joins Hirschmanin lamenting the marginalization of SoutheastAsian studiesin theUnitedStatessincetheend of theVietnam War.23To begin with,he claims that what is called "Southeast Asia" amountsto an artificial of diverse lands and peoples prolargely grouping and by alliedleaders jected as a distinct regionby colonialadministrators as a theater of operationsduringWorldWar II. Furthermore, Southeast Asian cultures tendto be all too derivative and hybrid, in lacking "classical traditions" and a "core" civilization. For Keyes, then,the difficulty of of the region doing SoutheastAsian studieslies in the unwieldy diversity its illusory is to say,politiitself, unitythatin factis historically-which cally-produced. Where North Americanscholarsmightexpect to see continuous and fragmentary wholes,theyget fragmented polities;rather than neatlybounded areas where culturalborderssnuglywrap around social groups,they encounter a "subregion ofAsia" whoseregional coherence is a directresultof modernimperialist interventions. There is thus no waythatone can conceiveof thearea outsideof thepoliticsof itsdes-

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of theregionare at thesource The arbitrariness and diffuseness ignation. of the scholarship and diffuseness about it. Similarly, of the arbitrariness thereaccountfortheerratic of UnitedStatesinvolvement thevicissitudes here. supportforand theunevenqualityof theprograms on theprospects reflects for But likeHirschman, Keyes optimistically studies "now undertaken SoutheastAsian scholars, by indigenous deeper and richerthan any carriedout by Americans."Whereas "we" used to havenow become muchbetter at studying themselves. they study"them," a new generation ofundergraduates-secondand third-genIn addition, fromthe regionAsian Americansas well as recentimmigrants eration in SoutheastAsian studiesas part of have now begun to takean interest In either educationand languagerequirements. their case, indigegeneral thanjust plain "Americans"now seem poised to be nous scholarsrather thenextvanguardof SoutheastAsian studies. of marginality and the celebraThis play betweenthe dramatization and closelyargued in the is best exemplified tion of scholarly diversity are peressays by JamesScott and BenedictAnderson.Scott's remarks the status of Southover meatedwithan acute sense of anxiety peripheral He agonizesabout east Asian studiesin theuniversity. theacademy, howthecultural we are within and marginal howscattered we study divides us-what do thestuoftheregion andhistorical diversity ofBurman court have ofriceplanting in Ilocosandthestudent dent poetry has a Asia as a fieldof study to say to each other-andhow Southeast an intellectual than administrative presence.24 presence stronger fearherethatSoutheastAsian studiesmayno longer There is a lingering be, if it everwas, forreal. Lacking an "intellectual presence,"it may be Firstof all, more of a bureaucratic charade,a failedcolonial enterprise. withstudying theregionlies in itsunmanageable "our" problem diversity, of of languagesand the practicaldifficulty withthe profusion beginning of social is thehistorical them.Even moresignificant hegemony mastering science disciplinesover area studies in the United States, which has of and approachesto the field.Such "our" knowledge distorted severely of a conditionshave turned"Southeast Asian studies [into] something freak,relatively overdevelopedwhen it comes to political science and when it comes to literature, art, woefully underdeveloped anthropology, music,classicalstudies,and contemporary popularculture."25 is thewayit accountsforthepreWhatis curiousaboutthisdiagnosis area Rather thanas a function in studies. of the social sciences dominance of Cold Warliberalism, Scott withthepolitics oftheacademy'scomplicity of theabsence of a sees theascendanceof thesocial sciencesas theresult in AmericanSoutheastAsian studies.Such a of Orientalism" "tradition 100 L. Rafael Vicente

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classical Orientalism,with its focus on the humanities,would have anchoredthe evanescent and evershifting social sciencetheories through which the regionhas been largelyseen.26Minimizingthe "prejudices" thatclassicalOrientalism Scottnonetheless laments its contains, invariably would have provideda humaniabsence. He arguesthatsuch a tradition of Southties core thatwould have mitigated the "freakish" development and east Asian studies,making it moreintellectually endowrecognizable its a semblance of institutional with respectability. ing practitioners SoutheastAsian Because of the absence of an Orientalist tradition, studiesremainsfartoo vulnerable to theories whichproveno morethan "shallow and ephemeralfads." Echoing Robert Hall's complaintabout theisolationand overspecialization Scottcaricaplaguingthe disciplines, as "Rube Goldbergmachinesforscratchturessuch fashionable theories Scott ing our backs." However,whereHall saw area studiesas a solution, sees themas casualtiesof crass careerism to such fads as "postpinned modern modes of analysis," whereby "larger and larger claims are bitsofempirical matter." What emerges, accordimposedon eversmaller freedom"on thewriter's ing to Scott,is a kindof unbridled "interpretive value beyondthe momentof theirwriting. part whose resultshave little the about to a resistance to theory, is linked or Hence, anxiety marginality as scholarly on the partof Scott. Theories, at least to theory affectation, like commodities, do not have a long shelflife.What "we" need in area thebuilt-in studiesare worksthatare "strong"enoughto resist "obsolescence" of theories a trace" once the theand willnot disappear"without oryon whichtheyare based "fallsout of fashion."27 In whatseems an overhasty conflation of theories withcommodities, Scottelidesthelinkbetweenthecirculation of theories and thepoliticsof area are where studies concerned. For theories do not just knowledge come and go. They are enforcedor marginalized, patronizedor demoand revised. and reworked nized,translated They are used contextually by different forspecificpurposes. And theytend to be transpractitioners formed contexts in which of,theinstitutional by,as wellas transformative are In to Scott's the of of in they deployed. response critique place theory area studies,one mightpose the matterdifferently. For example, one between"fads" and mightpoint out thatthe exerciseof distinguishing "fundamentals" relies for its coherence on relationsof power existing within a particular One thenwould need to ask interpretive community. how and whycertaintheories, called "classical Oriincluding something enableor disabletheproduction of certain kindsof scholarship, entalism," and to inquireintothevariedeffects of and reception to thatscholarship at a given historicalmoment.One mightalso ask how certainfigures come to act as patrons of certain themwiththecultural theories, investing fortheir institutional In otherwords,ifthere capitalnecessary legitimacy.
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how do area studiesparticipate in theunequal conis a politicsof theory, and contingent of contempotests,unevenarticulations, appropriations theories? What are the of such And how is effects rary powerful politics? are sometimes it thatthey in theguiseofOrientalist represented nostalgia? How do such politicsdetermine whose workswill be read, ignored,or rediscovered? A consideration of theory as an arena of conflict and debate,rather a thansimply as tool forexacting consensusand furthering careers, opens up anotheraspect of Scott's paper, one thatcan be seen in all the other papers in this volume: the question of the "we" who are engaged in who is this"we"? Spoken within a specific SoutheastAsian studies.Just conference but also to others this addressed immediate setting beyond this"we" is leftlargely context, unspecified. Are thereways in whichone mightcomplicatethis"we" and worry thispositing of a unified What ifthis"we" came to professional identity? includeSoutheastAsian scholarsthemselves, whether based in theregion or elsewhere,includingthe U.S., but fluentin the area's vernaculars? Could we then stillspeak, as Scott does, of language as "our greatest practicalproblem"?For whom would it be a problem?By complicating the question of this locus of address, could one also begin to rethink Fromthepointofviewofthosewho occupymultiple mar"marginality"? thattheir werecenters margins gins,or who mayhave grownup thinking in their own right--at leastuntilthey wentto graduate school-how might thepathosof marginality in theacademyappear?Wouldit bringthemto into the "mainstream" or to formallianceswith long forincorporation other peripheralformations in the academy? In short,what would an accountof SoutheastAsian studieslook likeonce "we" began to ask who and selectively the "we" of its address differentially interpellates positions? Hence when Scott, like Hirschmanand Keyes, concludes that the Asian studieslies in theworkof "indigenous scholars" hope forSoutheast out therefromwhom "we" can and mustlearn,one mightpause to ask of thisdifference about theconstitution between"us" and "them."For to raisethisquestionis also to ask about thelocationof SoutheastAsia itself. of the regionis historically the resultof imperialist and If the identity that nationalist is it to conceive of possible counterimaginings imaginings, and displacement of these hegemonic mightresultin the fragmentation For what one were to consider immiformations? if example, conceptual an "area" thatmight relocate bitsand pieces of forconceiving grantstyles in suburban California;Filipino Southeast Asia in Hmong settlements mail-order domestichelpers, in London or San Diego; brides,and artists or Vietnamese and Thai businesspeople in Texas, New York, and Louisiana? In such cases, "SoutheastAsia"-or at least its fragments102 L. Rafael Vicente

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could no longerbe neatlyfixedon a topographical gridas thatwhichis and "out distinct there." The differences markedout by the separate begin to regionaltermwould, fromthe perspectiveof the immigrant, "in here,"redrawing the distinction between"us" and "them." migrate forwhatIt is mysense,then,thatto speak of "indigenousscholars," simulin United States the everstrategic reasons, late-twentieth-century in the configuraisesthe questionof the immigrant taneously imaginary theposition of For whatifone wereto takeseriously of area studies. ration SoutheastAsian scholarswho, forvariousreasons,cannotor choose not faced by immito their"homes"? What are the predicaments to return grantscholars once theyare part of a plural diaspora? How do these differ fromthose of Americanand indigenousscholars? predicaments And isn't"indigeis "American"? How secureis thatterm? what (Indeed, therefore a historical and nous" alwaysalready term?) How negotiated does one begin to thinkabout the worksof Southeast Asian scholars few in the U.S., but whose conditionsmay be analogous to (admittedly theMiddle East, Latin America, scholarsfrom thoseof immigrant Africa, no if ever and so who are were,indigenousto on), longer, they Europe, in conversaany one place? How mighttheirwork-inescapablywritten and otherareas and engagedin variousprojects tionwithotherdisciplines to both withinand outside the academy-play differently of affiliation how would such and Asian" audiences? "Southeast "American" Indeed, in what counts as Southeast Asian scholars negotiatethe difference and "career" between"here" "critique,""commitment," "scholarship," and "there"? In raisingthesequestions,I do not pretendto offer any answersbut in the alludedto butneverquiterendered explicit onlyhighlight something and agenand within thelocations papersin thisvolume:thegaps between and in the face of cies of SoutheastAsian studies.Since decolonization, and spreading flexible mass labor regimes, migrations, global capitalism, it has notbeen possibleforarea studies telecommunications technologies, thatpresumesthe metroto be, a colonialundertaking to be, or merely ithas becomea administrative units. over its discrete control Rather, pole's in Asian is carried out Southeast studies as decentered affair, places as varied as Ann Arborand Amsterdam, Tokyoand Ithaca,Singaporeand Seatsincetheend ofWorld WarII, Southtle,Manila and London. In addition, east Asian studiesin theUnitedStateshas had amongitsmoreimportant French,and, on occasion, Irish,British, practitioners European (Jewish, even as U.S. SoutheastAsian scholars and Czech) Japaneseimmigrants, have migrated since the mid-1970s to such places as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom in Singapore,Hong Kong, the Netherlands, no longeravailable in the depresseduniversity search of opportunities the BenedictAnderson'sessay "The Changing of United States. markets
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Ecology of SoutheastAsian Studies in the United States, 1950-1990" themostthoughtful and sustained offers theneed to arguments regarding thenationalspecificity of SoutheastAsian studiesand itspracticonsider theimportance of examining an therelationship between tioners, stressing areas from area understudyand theshifting whereit is studied.28 Like Scott,Andersonsees a crisisin SoutheastAsian studies, though in termsof itsacademic marginalization or deficient Orientalnot simply ist legacy.Rather,Andersonprobes into the rise, demise,and potential of SoutheastAsian studiesin termsof thosehe regardsas its resurgence locationsand conditions of their work. agentsand thechanging principal These includethe seminalfather (fortheyare all male), the colofigures theirpostcolonial successors in the formof nial scholar-bureaucrats; male and femaleuniversity NorthAmerican scholars;and theindigenous "back home." SoutheastAsian scholars, manyof whomare now working Andersonpointsout thatthemain differences amongtheseagentsof envidistinct SoutheastAsian studieslie in the historically professional of The oldergenerations ronments in whichtheyhave livedand worked. started scholarsbefore WorldWarII rarely Europeanand Euro-American of someAmericans, out as area specialists and,withthepossibleexception affiliations whiletheyresidedin theregion. did nothave formal university colonial scholarsenjoyedtheadvanthese to the bureaucracy, Appointed whollysubsidized by the state and tage of livingin the area full-time, was the degreeto under no greatpressureto publish.More important whichtheybecame "creolized."They mixedeasilywithlocal elites,were had Southof everyday and commonly politics, pluggedintothecurrents a a lovers. As result, eastAsian spousesand/or they acquired degreeoffluuseful not documents to translate sufficient directly encyin thevernaculars and conserbut also forthecollection onlyforthepolicingof populations to epic poetry. fromepigraphy vationof "classicaltexts"ranging Hence, of the colonial the interests work was whiletheir state, by shapedprimarily was contiguouswiththe place of theirdaily the site of theirscholarship existence,so that a deep and continuousconnectionobtainedbetween whattheydid and wheretheylived.29 in theUnitedStatesare no longer modernarea specialists By contrast, statebut are employedas full-time of a colonialwelfare the beneficiaries conditions and must compete under marketlike scholarsin universities in addition to for promotions, publications,and grants.Furthermore, comtheyare requiredto teach and serveon university doing research, extended to no can that so periodsof mittees, they longerexpect spend have been residence in theirareas of study.Indeed, travelitineraries abbrevifindthemselves spendingincreasingly reversed;area specialists or lovers "back ated periods "there" while bringingspouses, children, of theconsolidation of decolonization, here"to live.Of course,thehistory
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divisionsand professional and the postwarstress standards, disciplinary on generaleducationas part of the university's civic responsibility have contextsfor area and methodological radicallyalteredthe institutional the very studies.Whereas colonialbureaucrat-scholars literally governed so came to modern of their know them objects intimately), study (and and departments and are are governed area specialists by their disciplines whichdesignates objectsand methodsof subjectto the "theory-market" were delimitedby the investigations study.Hence, while the former's bordersof theirarea ("Java,""Malaysia," "Burma"), the administrative as cases latterare attachedto disciplinesin whichareas figure belatedly of the "modernizaThe overalleffect againstwhichto testhypotheses. thefit betweenthe sitesof tion" of area studiesforAndersonis to shatter the ties betweenthe life and thus to and rupture everyday scholarship places of workand the spaces of love. of language is the"chaotic" condition of thisalienation Symptomatic in fluent became Colonial scholars in Asian studies. Southeast learning wereable to embark vernacular and therefore boththeoraland thewritten studies.However, and literary on elaboratephilological,archaeological, withtheirprimary modernarea specialists, allegianceto the theoretical come to apprehendonlythe most superficial idioms of theirdisciplines, has As a result, and mundaneaspectsofthevernacular. languageteaching studiesand demotedto a "servicerole." It become divorcedfrom literary is a poor cousin to the disciplines,investedwith littleculturalcapital cuts in aim, languagetraining utilitarian within the university. Narrowly ancientand contemporary offfrom modernspecialists traditions, literary area of study.30 their themfrom further alienating stateof Southaccountof the contemporary Againstthispessimistic east Asian studies,Andersonpointsout whatmaybe themostpromising of solutionto the presentcrisis,one thatresonateswiththe expectations of numbers conference: the writers in the the other postcolonial growing in theregionitself, SoutheastAsian scholars.Livingand working indigedisare structurally nous intellectuals analogous to-though politically workintersects withtheirdaily tinctfrom-colonial scholarsin thattheir lives, makingthe politicalstakes in theirscholarshippatentlyobvious. which Their physicallocationenables themto commandthe vernacular, provides them with ready access to local knowledge and important withthe literary traditions archivalresourcesand withcritical familiarity lives of the area's peoples, of the region.Dwellingnear the imaginative of indigenousscholars are positionedto conveyits nuanced structures to illuminatecontemporary feelingand to draw on classical traditions events,and vice versa. And those scholars who can translatebetween and internaforboth Anglo-American Englishand indigenouswritings, of knowledge.31 tionalaudiences,are not onlyproducersbut brokers
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Butwhatdoes it mean for indigenous scholars to home? return Whatdoes "home"mean to and what them, does "returning" entail?

One can deduce from Anderson's account,or at leastfrom mysketch in SoutheastAsian studies.It beginswith of it, a dialecticalprogression the colonial accumulationof knowledgethathas both a politicaland a in thatit furnishes foundational the ends of colonial political significance: that the foundational in it initiates modern discourseof area hegemony; studies.This stageis thennegatedby a postcolonial, liberal,and United momentgovernedby whatI have earliercalled an inteStates-centered culturallogic. Such a momentis characterized by the global grationist in the wake of decolonization diffusion of Americaninterests and thereon the one hand, and of afterby the emergenceof new nation-states, on theother.At the same time,the communist and minority challenges, workof the social sciencesin the United Statesgivesrise to disciplinary technologiesintendedto manage the modalitiesof nationaland ethnic It is preciselythis double context-a world transdifferences flexibly. formed intoa collection of nation-states and a (dis)UnitedStatesdesirous and domesticdifferences-that of managinginternational fosterswhat Anderson sees as the dystopicconditionsof modern Southeast Asian of scholarsfrom their areas of study, thedivorceof studies:thealienation and hence the segregation of politicaland instiliterature, languagefrom from sourcesin and effects on imaginary accountsofregions their tutional social relations. in area studiesis in turnnegatedby However,thiscrisisof modernity ofindigenous Asianscholars. theemergence between Southeast Mediating scholars local and global knowledgeformations, indigenous reconfigure In area studiesin termssalientto theirownnational-popular conditions. colonial and Americanliberallegacies,relocating doing so, theyrework Asian studiesin theregionitself. Thus theyare theterminus of Southeast Asian studies, invested withthepromiseofrevitalizing Southeast bringing it "back home,"as it were,within the compass oftheir nations. home?What scholarsto return But whatdoes it mean forindigenous entail?If thereis does "home" mean to them,and whatdoes "returning" a sense, impliedbut neverquite elaboratedin the essaysin thisvolume, a riteof passage in acquiringthestascholarsgo through thatindigenous what and how does thatritesignify? What different tus of a specialist, routes do such scholars traverseduringgraduateand/orpostgraduate outside Southeast Asia? And do those routes trainingin institutions withoccasionalinvitations nationsof origin, inevitably loop back to their conferences? to international By posing these questions, I mean to take Anderson's dialectical on whatI take accountof SoutheastAsian studiesa stepfurther, pressing between theneed to examinetherelation to be itskeyargument: agentsof and nationallocationsat a givenhisarea studiesand theirinstitutional scholarsare enlisted Is therea sense in whichindigenous toricalmoment. for colonial and liberal scholars-in here and elsewhereas substitutes
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sublation?To what extentdo such gestures effect as theirhistorical risk of earliercolonialcontexts the idealization of area studieswhilehomogethejaggedand often indeterminate itineraries situations, nizingthediverse of indigenousscholarsand the various contextswithinwhichtheyfind them en route to becomingarea themselves? What dilemmasconfront in the West? once "home"-wherever thatmight be-how And specialists wherethenotionof "specializaare theypressedto perform as specialists settled? Positioned tion,"muchless "professionalization," maybe farfrom in accordancewithlocal and national of status, class, differently categories and whether "here" or how do "there," ethnicity, gender, indigenous scholarsindigenizethe modalitiesof theiralienation while oftenfinding their In comingto terms themselves alienated from affiliations? indigenous and alterity of their with theirplural alienationsand the arbitrariness what identities do fashion for themselves at "home"? they indigenousness, of exclusionsand inclusions, and anxieties, do What relations of interests such identity formations predicate? And whatifthisreturn so thattheindige"home" failsto materialize, scholar?For indeed,thecategory of nous scholarbecomes theimmigrant the immigrant-intransit, unsettledand caught betweennation-states, one to ask about thepossipotentially uncanny-gives one pause, forcing of a scholarship thatis neither colonial nor liberalnor indigenous, bility enmeshed in all these states. How would the consideration yetconstantly of what I have been calling the immigrant imaginarycomplicate the accountsof area studies,making whereexactly the it harder to determine "home" of such scholarship lies and who its privileged or practitioners audiences mightbe? What are the languagesappropriate to the studyof an area thatexistsas a boundedterritory no less thanas a diasporicentity held together Where colonialand by stylesof "dwellingin travelling"?32 and disciplinary liberalarea studiesassumed the administrative necessity of distinguishing betweenindigenousand foreign, and whereindigenous takeforgranted the "naturalness" of the nationas the scholarship might unitof area studies,how would immigrant area studiesnegoelementary in its study? tiatewhatconstitutes an area and whatcountsas expertise These are some of the questionsthatoccurredto me as I read these reflections on Southeast Asian studies, questions that seemed unaccountedforand leftunaskedby theessaysin thiscollection. Provokedby into the historical the authors'insights of the agencies and contingency locationsof area studies,thesequestionsare meantto traceotherlinesof and to suggestthebeginnings of a critical of area studinquiry genealogy ies specific to our moment. Such a taskentailsa double gesture: refiguring the relationship of dependencybetweenarea studiesand the disciplines and redrawing the (and by extensionbetweenlanguage and literature), notion of areas to include the sense of their and very aleatory appearances unstableboundaries. intheU.S. AreaStudies 107

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Notes
of this essay, I want to thankBenedict For theircommentson and criticisms Anderson,James Siegel, JohnPemberton,MarilynIvy, Ella Shohat, Suzanne Brenner,Nancy Florida, Ann Stoler, Nick Dirks, Toby Volkman,Geoffrey White,and IttyAbraham. 1. Rey Chow, "The Politicsand Pedagogyof Asian Literatures in American in Writing in Contemporary Cultural Universities," Diaspora: Tactics ofIntervention Studies(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 120-43. 2. RobertHall, Area Studies:WithSpecial Reference to TheirImplications for in theSocial Sciences(New York:Committeeon WorldArea Research Research Program,Social Science ResearchCouncil, 1948). 3. Ibid., 12, 14. 4. For similar uses of the humanities to defendthe utility and value of area see the essays studies,especiallywithregardto generaleducationrequirements, in Eugene P. Boardman, ed., Asian Studies in LiberalEducation (Washington, D.C.: Associationof AmericanColleges, 1959). The essaysof MiltonSinger,W. Theodore de Barry,and JohnK. Fairbankson designing "Asian undergraduate courses are especiallyinstructive civilizations" in the waysby whichtheheteroof "Asia" came to be assimilated intothe or, as I arguebelow,integrated geneity of In mirror Western civilization. "Asia" became a effect, pedagogical precincts of and for "Greece" and "Rome" as these classical antecedents took on a new in Cold WarAmerica.Hence, learning about the former was seen as significance understood as theincorpart and parcelof thesame processof liberaleducation, limitless boundariesin porationof the selfinto a liberalsocietywithpotentially and time. space 5. Hall, Area Studies,14. 6. Ibid., 16. 7. Ibid., iii, 2. 8. Ibid., 10, 24-25, 26. 9. Ibid., 26. 10. Ibid., 49. 11. These remarks on the liberaldiscourseof Cold War area studiesare in and the Politicsof General part indebtedto Michael Geyer,"Multiculturalism NewEducation," CriticalInquiry19 (spring1993), 499-533; and Christopher and ManagerialDemoc"What Was PoliticalCorrectness? Race, theRight, field, racy in the Humanities,"CriticalInquiry 19 (winter1993), 308-36. See also and Neocolonialism,"in EduEdward H. Berman,"Foundations,Philanthropy, ed. Philip G. Altbach (New Brunswick, cationand theColonialExperience, N.J.: Transaction,1984), 253-72. 12. Hall, Area Studies, 49. betweenthe 13. One wondersif this image of a senior-junior partnership not area studies was influenced in Hall's case his involvement and by disciplines framework fortheU.S. occupationand reformain helpingto lay theintellectual thewar. I owe thisinsight to Masao Miyoshi. tionof theJapanesepolityafter 14. Hall, Area Studies, 32, 34-35. 15. See Barbara B. Clowse, Brainpower fortheCold War:TheSputnikCrisis and theNational Defense Act of 1958 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood,1981), for debateson thepassage of theNDEA. See also detailsregarding the congressional 108 Vicente L. Rafael

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JohnS. Diekhoff,NDEA and Modern Foreign Languages (New York: Modern forAsian Language Association,1965); and Charles O. Hucker, TheAssociation of Washington Studies:An Interpretive Press, 1973), History(Seattle: University for the benefits that accrued to area studies programsand graduate students Asia as a resultof theNDEA and its subsequentemendations. studying on a 16. See David Featherman, "SSRC, Then and Now: A Commentary CounItems: Newsletter Recent HistoricalAnalysis," oftheSocial ScienceResearch cil 48, no. 1 (March 1994), 13-22. foun17. In thisregard,it is usefulto note thatsome of the mostpowerful of investing have had a history in dationsthathave fundedarea studiesprograms studiesof socioeconomicconditionsin the southernpart of the United States, Americanspriorto 1945. The Rockefeller especiallyas thesetouchedon African family'sGeneral Education Board, the Phelps-StokesFund, and the Anna T. Jeanes Fund, for example, were major contributorsto Tuskegee Institute, to ruralblacks. Indeed, the Rockefeller designedto providevocationaltraining in the 1920s to encouragetheextension Foundationfundedsubsequentattempts of the Tuskegee educationalapproach to the Britishcolonies of Africathrough societiesand the AfricanEducation CommisAmericanand British missionary sion. And by the 1930s, the Carnegie Corporation,along withthe Rockefeller fora selectgroupof Africans and British colowas providing Foundation, grants to studythe Tuskegee systemin the United States. See Berman, nial officials and Neocolonialism," 255-59. See also Elbridge "Foundations, Philanthropy, Council: The FirstFiftyYears(New York: Social Sibley,Social ScienceResearch in the Science Research Council, 1974), foran account of the SSRC's interest urban "underclass,"as well as the more criticalaccount of the SSRC by Donald Fisher,Fundamental of theSocial Sciences:Rockefeller, Philanthropy, Development of and the United StatesSocial ScienceResearch Council(Ann Arbor:University philanMichigan Press, 1993). It is arguablethatthesemodes of interventionist to influence of WarII programs theformation setthestageforpost-World thropy to U.S. univerand studygrants Third Worldintellectuals by wayof scholarships housed both in an academic departsities,wheretheywould be "dual citizens," of those grantswere on mentand in an area studiesprogram.What the effects in of intellectuals is, course,farfrom particular unambiguous. particular settings of theeffects of traveling across colonialand It is theneed to revisit theambiguity to in the lattersectionof this postcolonialbordersthatI seek to call attention essay. 18. Hall, Area Studies, 21, 23. are 19. Again, the essays in Boardman,Asian Studiesin LiberalEducation, forwhattheytellus about theliberalprojectof area studies,at least illuminating where the undergraduateteaching of Asian civilizationsis concerned. These of thekindsof liberalOrientalism thatcame to be instituted essaysare suggestive to survey in the textbooks and teachingstylesdemanded of anyone attempting of students "Asia" fora new and heterogeneous yetto be assimilated generation into an Americansocietyafter WorldWar II. For a contemporary echo of these of an liberal concerns over the civic vocation of area studies in the formation a a War "informed albeit concern inflected citizenry," by post-Cold critiqueof see Kenton W. Worcester, Orientalism, European Studies," Items: "Rethinking Council48, no. 1 (March 1994), 23-26; Newsletter oftheSocial ScienceResearch or Stagnation? and Sidney Tarrow,Rebirth EuropeanStudiessince 1989 (New reiterate York:Social Science ResearchCouncil, 1993). These writings myearlier Area Studies in the U.S. 109

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coexistenceof Orientalism the institutionalized and its disconpoint regarding of liberalpluralism. theframework tentswithin to Newfield,"What Was PoliticalCor20. I owe the termrainbow menace rectness?" 21. Charles Hirschman,Charles Keyes, and Karl Hutterer, eds., Southeast Asian Studiesin theBalance: Reflections America(Ann Arbor,Mich.: Associfrom ation of Asian Studies, 1992). To my knowledge,this volume has yet to be reviewedin a majorjournal. "The Stateof SoutheastAsian Studiesin American 22. CharlesHirschman, Asian Studiesin theBalance,41-58. in Hirschmanet al., Southeast Universities," at Wingspread 23. CharlesKeyes, "A Conference and Rethinking Southeast Asian Studiesin theBalance,9-24. Asian Studies,"in Hirschmanet al., Southeast There is a curious silencearoundthe issue of theVietnamWar in thesepapers, tacitly agreethatit had an enormousimpacton thepolitics thoughall thewriters SoutheastAsia-and East Asia, forthatmatter-in the and cultureof studying on the production U.S. What was the impactof the war and antiwar activism of alternative ideolopublic spheres?How did thesespheresin turnshape different of gies, curtailor promotecareers,radicalize or containthe veryorganization academic labor as well as the relationships and stuamong and betweenfaculty within and professionalism the dents,and place in doubtthenotionsof expertise liberalacademy?What would accountsof SoutheastAsian studieslook likethat took into serious considerationthe local historiesof programs-for example, and students thoseat Cornell,Madison, Michigan,and Berkeley-whosefaculty actively opposed the war and thus questionedthe verydivide betweenthe uniand society? versity in Hirschmanet al., Southeast Asian Studiesin 24. JamesScott,"Foreword," theBalance, 1. 25. Ibid., 2. 26. For similarstatements the lamentableabsence of a classical regarding in AmericanSoutheastAsian studies,see FrankReynolds, Orientalist tradition on the Humanities," and Karl "SoutheastAsian Studies in America:Reflections Asian Studiesin theBalance, Hutterer, "Epilogue," in Hirschmanet al., Southeast in Orientalism 61, 141. One cannothelpbutwonderabouttheincipient operating To beginwith, ofU.S. intervention in theseanguished reiterations. thelonghistory volumitheregionafter the turnof the century has, amongotherthings, spurred on SoutheastAsians forvarioustacticaland interventionary nous writings ends, likeDean C. Worcester on cum businessmen whether thoseof ethnologists writing on Thailand and Burma,Hollywoodspectacles thePhilippines, Cold War fictions of antiwar bent on activists Orientalisms set in Siam or Indonesia,the left-wing oftheVietnam at theheight nationalist War,or thebodyofpostfigures emulating American warethnographies oftheregion-thelistis endless.In sum,to claimthat to misof is both of Asia are bereft Orientalist traditions Southeast understandings of practices, of Orientalism as a discursive network the complexity understand ofthe thehistory and to repress and phantasmatic desires, projections knowledges, itsown nationUnitedStatesas a colonialpowerhistorically capable ofproducing evensay "postclassical"-modes of Orientalist knowledge. allydistinct--one might 27. Scott,"Foreward,"5. 28. BenedictAnderson,"The ChangingEcologyof SoutheastAsian Studies Asian Studiesin in the UnitedStates, 1950-1990," in Hirschmanet al., Southeast in thisessay,but of some of the arguments theBalance, 25-40. For a reworking 110 Vicente L. Rafael

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see BenedictAnderson,"Introduction," pitchedat an autobiographical register, in Languageand Power:Exploring PoliticalCulture in Indonesia(Ithaca,N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 1-16. The linkbetweenarea and agencyis in some in Anderson'smassively influential Comwork, waysalreadyencrypted Imagined munities: on the Originsand Spread of Nationalism(London: Verso, Reflections 1983, rev. 1991). 29. Anderson,"The Changing Ecology of SoutheastAsian Studies in the United States, 1950-1990," in Southeast Asian Studiesin theBalance,25-26. 30. Ibid., 27-35. Indeed, it is usually as language instructors that many initially (thoughnot all) SoutheastAsian scholarsfindthemselves positionedin American universities, simultaneously drillingand discipliningstudentsinto as nativeinformants. Thus Southeast speakingthe vernacularand functioning Asian languageinstructors double as sourcesof linguistic and resources authority fortheoretical If languagelearning formulations. in American is so marginalized it maywellhave to do withtherelative of nativespeakers universities, marginality in the academic community as much as withthemorevulgarinstrumentalization of languagein the disciplines. 31. Ibid., 36-37. Of course,one of theissues thatsuch an account does not even beginto raise,and thathere can onlybe mentioned in passing,is the effect of Americanwomen'sgrowing presencein SoutheastAsian studies.What difference did gendermake in the studyof the region?How did women's entry into area studies change the natureof training in and focus of these fields?Nancy Florida and Suzanne Brennerhad alertedme to theseand otherquestionswhen in Anderson'sor myrendering theytold me thattheycould not findthemselves of thisaccount.And ifsuch an accounthas merely beggedthe questionofAmerican women'sinvolvement in SoutheastAsian studies,it does not even begin to address the place of SoutheastAsian women,oftenreduced to the positionof cum nativeinformants. spouses,languageinstructors 32. I borrowthistermfrom JamesClifford, "TravellingCultures,"in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg et al. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 96-112. For a more pessimistic formsthat analysisof some of the nonscholarly thisimmigrant imaginary mighttake (albeit in a non-SoutheastAsian context), such as fostering communal,ethnic,and sectarianviolencein the home country while escaping accountability in the countryof one's residence,see Benedict Anderson,"Exodus," Critical Inquiry20, no. 2 (winter1994), 314-27.

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