open access
메뉴
open access
메뉴
ISSN : 2092-738X
One of the goals of this article is to continue the momentum begun by emerging scholarship on theory and practice of writing about visual culture of and in Southeast Asia. I hope to offer culturally sensitive and embodied ways of looking at images and objects as sites/sights of cultural knowledge as further theoretical intervention. The argument put forward in my essay is three-fold: first, I critique the prevailing logocentric approach in the field of Southeast Asian Studies and I argue that in a postcolonial, global, and transnational period, it is important to be inclusive of other objects as sites/sights of social, political and cultural analysis beyond written and oral texts. Second, I argue that although it has its own political and theoretical problems, the evolving field of Visual Studies as it is practiced in the United States is one of many ways to decolonize the prevailing logocentric approach to Southeast Asian Studies. Third, I argue that if one reads these Euro-American derived theories of vision and visuality through the lens of what Walter Mignolo calls “colonial difference(s),” then Visual Studies as an evolving field has the potential to offer more nuanced local ways of looking at and understanding objects, vision, and visuality. Last, I point out that unlike in the West where there is an understanding of pure, objective and empirical vision, local Southeast Asian perspectives on objects and visions are more embodied and multi-sensorial. I argue that if one is ethically mindful of the local cultural ways of seeing and knowing objects, then the evolving field of Visual Studies offers a much-needed intervention to the privileged, lingering logocentric approach to Southeast Asian Studies. Moreover, these alternative methods might help to decolonize method and theory in academic disciplines that were invented during the colonial period.
Anderson, Benedict. 2016. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York, Verso.
Al-Woozain Ali, Mohamed. 2016. Scent from Heaven. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=jv69pYSm2oo&t=339s (accessed March 2, 2018)
Bal, Mieke. 2003. Visual Essentialism and the Object of Visual Culture. The Journal of Visual Culture, 2(5): 5-32.
Benjamin, Walter. 1968. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Trans. By Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2010. Legacies of Bandung: Decolonisation and the Politics of Culture. Christopher J. Lee, ed. 45-60. Making a World After Empire: The Bundung Moment and Its Political Afterlives. Ohio: Ohio University Press.
Chitrabongs, M. L. Chittawadi. 2011. The Politics of Defecation in Bangkok of the Fifth Reign. Journal of Siam Society, 99:172-194.
Clementin-Ojha, Catherine and Pierre-Yves Manguin, eds. 2006. A Century of in Asia: The History of École Française d’Extrème-Orient 1898-2006. Paris: École Française d’Extrème-Orient.
Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison. 1992. The Image of Objectivity. Representations, 40: 81-83.
Duong, Lan and Lê, Viêt, eds. 2018. Myriad Modernities: Southeast Asian/Diasporic Visual Cultures. Visual Anthropology 31(1-2): 1-179.
Edwards, Penny, Boreth Ly and Khatharya Um. 2015. New Directions for Cambodian Studies. unpublished manuscript.
Flueckiger, Joyce and Laurie Sears, eds. 1991. Boundaries of the Text:Epic Performances in South and Southeast Asia. Ann Arbor:Michigan Papers in South and Southeast Asia.
Foster, Hal. 1998. Vision and Visuality. Seattle, WA: Bay Press.
Frey, Marc and Nicola Spakowski, eds. 2016. Asianisms: Regionalist Interactions & Asian Integration. Singapore: NUS Press.
Galloway, Alexander. 2011. Are Somethings Unrepresentable? Theory, Culture and Society, 28: 87-102.
Global Parliamentary Report’s Interview with Tioulong Samura. 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56WUSpltT0w (accessed March 12, 2017).
Goh, Beng-Lan. 2011. Disciplines and Area Studies in the Global Age: Southeast Asian Reflections. Goh Beng-Lan, ed. 1-51. Decentring & Diversifying Southeast Asian Studies. Singapore:ISEAS.
Goh, Beng-Lan. 2015. “Makan Nggak Makan Asal Kumpum, Jakarta Biennale. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTQrjAPldoU(accessed July, 20, 2017)
Hall, Kenneth. 2011. A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Societal Development. Cambridge: Rowmann and Littlefield Publishers.
Hall, Stuart. 1996. The West and the Rest. Stuart Hall ed. 184-227. Modernity: An Introduction to Societies. Cambridge, Mass:Blackwell Publishers.
Haraway, Donna. 2002. The Persistence of Vision. Nicholas Mirzoeff, ed. 677-684. The Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge.
Jackson, Peter. 2004. The Performative State: Semi Coloniality and the Tyranny of Images in Modern Thailand. Sojourn, 19 (2):210-220.
Jones, Caroline. ed. 2002. Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology and Contemporary Art. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Koestler, Arthur. 1967. The Ghost in the Machine. London: Hutchinson.
Kristeva, Julia. 1992. The Power of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press.
Ly, Boreth. 2012. Buddhist Walking Meditations and Contemporary Art of Southeast Asia. Positions, 20(1): 267-285.
Mrázek, Jan and Morgan Pitelka. 2007. What’s the Use of Art?: Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context. Honololu:University of Hawai’i Press.
Mignolo, Walter. 2002. The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference. The South Atlantic Quarterly 101: (1):57-96.
Mitchell, W.J.T. 1994. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mulvey, Laura. 2007. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. 833-844.
Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. New York: Oxford UP.
O’Connor, Stanley. 1983. “Art Critics, Connoisseurs, and Collectors in the Southeast Asian Rain Forest: A Study in Cross-Cultural Art Theory.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 14, no. 2:400-408.
Pope, Alexander. 1896. An Essay on Criticism. London: W. Lewis in Ruffel-Street.
Poshyananda, Apinan. 2003. Montien Boonma: Path of Suffering. Montien Boonma: Temple of the Mind. New York: The Asia Society.
Poshyananda, Apinan. 1996. Traditions and Tensions: Contemporary Art in Asia. New York: Asia Society Galleries.
Quandt, James. 2009. Tropical Malady. James Quandt, ed., Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Vienna, Austria: SYNEMA Publikationen.
Rorty, Richard, ed. 1967. The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Press.
Sakai, Naoki. 2001. Dislocation of the West and the Status of the Humanities. Traces 1: 71-94.
Schober, Juliene. 2002. Burmese Mahamuni Image. 260-273. Juliene Schober, ed. Sacred Biography in The Buddhist Traditions of South and Southeast Asia. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.
Schopen, Gregory. 1999. Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.
Thomas, G. Richard. 2006. Philology in Vietnam and Its Impact on Southeast Asian Cultural History. Modern Asian Studies, 40:(2): 477-515.
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. 2012. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New Zealand: Otago University Press.
Virilio, Paul. 1984. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. New York: VERSO.
Weerasethakul, Apichatpong. 2005. Tropical Malady. DVD. Culver City, CA: Strand Releasing.
Weerasethakul, Apichatpong. 2014. Interview. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=xlLjafasEAU&t=17s (accessed April 30, 2017)
Winichakul, Thongchai. 2000. The Quest for Siwilai: A Geographical Discourse of Civilizational Thinking in Late Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Siam. The Journal of Asian Studies, 59(3): 528-549.
Winichakul, Thongchai. 2000. The Others Within: Travel and Ethno-Spatial Differentiation of Siamese Subjects 1885-1910. Andrew Turton, ed. 28-62. Civility and Savagery: Social Identity in Tai States. London: Curzon Press.
Winichakul, Thongchai. 2018. Area Studies in the Age of Big Data and Hyper-Utilitarianism. Paper presented at the 2018International Conference of ISEAS/BUFS, Busan, Republic of Korea.