ISSN : 2092-738X
This article is a sub-section of a comparative analysis of depictions of violence in Jakarta’s Museum of the Indonesian Communist Party’s Treachery, Ho Chi Minh City’s War Remnants Museum, and Phnom Penh’s Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. In comparing these public history sites, I analyze how memories of mass violence were central to state formation in both Suharto’s anti-Communist New Order (1966-1998), the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (1976-present), and Cambodia since the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea (1979-present). While this comparison points out specific distinctions about the role of the military, the nature of revolution, and conceptions of gender, it argues for a central similarity in the use of a mythology of victimization in building these post-conflict nation-states. This article focuses on my gendered analysis of the use of images of women and children in each museum. Depending on context and political purpose, these museums cast women as tragic victim, revolutionary heroine, or threat to the social order. My analysis of gender places stereotypical images of violence against women (the trope of women and children as the ultimate victims) in conversation with dark fantasies of women as perpetrators of savage violence and heroic images of women liberated by participation in violence.
Two utilitarian and symbolic objects associated with womanhood in Cambodian culture are the stove and the pot. The pot is a symbol of both the womb and female sexuality; the stove is a symbol of gendered feminine labor. This article argues that the sexist representations of the Khmer female body by modern Cambodian male artists demonstrate an inherited legacy of Orientalist stereotypes. These images were formed : under French colonialism and often depict Khmer women as erotic/exotic native Others. Starting in the 1970s, however, if not earlier, Cambodian women began to question the gendering of social roles that confined them to domestic space and labor. This form of social questioning was especially present in pop songs. In recent years, contemporary Cambodian woman artists such as Neak Sophal and Tith Kanitha have made use of rice pots and stoves in their art as freighted symbols of femininity. Neak created an installation of rice pots from different households in their village, while Tith rebelled against this gendered role by destroying cooking stoves as an act of defiance against patriarchy in her performance art.
Singapore and Thailand have been rapidly ageing. There has been a growing demand for eldercarers in the home-setting for which migrant domestic workers have filled the role. This paper examines the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Consensus governing women migrant workers entering the eldercare sector. It argues that because the ASEAN Consensus is not legally binding, it only serves to reinforce the sovereignty of states in the treatment of migrant workers instead of member states acting in unison to ensure labour protections for this group; as a result, Singapore and Thailand do not feel the need to step up protections for this group of workers according to national labor laws and hence low-skilled women migrant workers entering the eldercare sector continue to be vulnerable to labour abuses. Thus as with globalization, the ASEAN Economic Community manifests the paradox of borders: that while states are economically interconnected and interdependent, they are simultaneously disconnected and independent from each other.
This paper introduces the different Southeast Asian Studies academic programs of three universities in northeast Asia namely: Peking University (China); Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Japan); and Busan University of Foreign Studies (Korea). This study mainly focuses on the Philippines as part of Southeast Asian studies program in the said universities. The researcher utilized archival work related to the Southeast Asian studies programs of each university. The study also examined the curriculum of the program, background of faculty, and motivations of students in studying Southeast Asian studies by conducting interviews and surveys. Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) Analysis was employed by the researcher in analyzing the data from the different universities. Finally, in mapping out the teaching of Filipino language and Philippine-related subjects, this paper argued that Northeast Asian universities established a Southeast Asian Studies focused on Philippines because of various socio-economic-political factors, and not only because of the Filipino diaspora in the region.
This article explored how the introduction of the Gregorian calendar transformed the Buddhist traditional practices of a noble class family who lost power in the royal court during the emergence of the British in Upper Myanmar. It examined in micro-level, the said changes by way of Wekmasuk Wundauk U Latt’s diary, which recorded the social and economic conditions of Mandalay, then the capital of the Myanmar kingdom, from 1886 to 1898. When Burmese kings reigned in Mandalay, the court closed on Sabbath day, when the Buddhist Burmese went to monasteries to fulfill religious obligations. The introduction of the Gregorian calendar turned Sunday into a regular day off, which left Sabbath day to be used for more work. This prevented the then noblemen to attend to monastic duties as they had to use the day, for example to go to the bank to draw their pension. This research reveals that the Gregorian calendar has transformed the day off from “holy day” to “holiday.”
The 1968 Huế Massacre is a horrifying event rarely mentioned today in Vietnamese history and mass media. It is forgotten perhaps because it is simply indescribable. This study reads a song by Vietnamese musician Trịnh Công Sơn, where he attempted to chronicle the catastrophic images of the massacre. We use the notion of symbolic death in psychoanalysis to interpretation of the song, and shed a new light on how it captured this historical event which eludes understanding.
This paper presents the work of Southeast Asian scholar Ramon Guillermo. Using sophisticated computer-aided methods, Guillermo approaches a range of topics in the wide fields of social sciences and the humanities. A creative writer as well as an activist, Guillermo grounds his studies in nationalism and Marxism. Particularly interested in Indonesian and Philippine society and culture, Guillermo engages with the writings of labor leaders Tan Malaka and Lope K. Santos, translations of Marx's Capital into Bahasa and Filipino, and studies as well the discursive and historical connections between the Communist Parties of both countries. The paper aims to introduce the innovations of Guillermo's studies, particularly in the fields of cultural studies and translation studies. The type of cultural studies Guillermo practices is empirical, taking inspiration from innovations done in the digital humanities. Guillermo is most opposed to trendy, fashion-seeking approaches that are not grounded on history. He reserves particular ire for "hip" postcolonialism, and instead praises studies that are founded on politics and materialism. In translation studies, Guillermo goes beyond the mere cataloguing of mistakes. For him, it is the mistakes and "perversities" of a translation that is interesting and illuminating. Guillermo himself is a translator, and the paper ends with a brief discussion of his production in this field.