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ISSN : 2092-738X
The present paper intends to explain the probable reasons and practical circumstances for the paucity of local scholars in the region in attaining international recognition as Southeast Asianists. Far from being an apologetic piece, on the contrary, our goal is to first ascertain the causal factors for the lacuna, and in turn, to propose hopeful and realistic panaceas in resolving and overcoming the dire situation. Why? The rationale and advantageous factors in nurturing Southeast Asians as Southeast Asianist follow in the later part of the paper.
Education is widely considered an essential tool for national development, particularly in Southeast Asia, in which advancing education ideally means advancing social cohesion, and security, and economic growth. This paper juxtaposes The Rainbow Troops: A Novel (2005, hereafter The Rainbow Troops) by Indonesian writer Andrea Hirata and Cho tôi xin một vé đi tuổi thơ (Ticket to Childhood, 2008) by Vietnamese writer Nguyễn Nhật Ánh, understanding their potentially generated dialogue about idealized education. Reading character constructions and narrative flows against educational policies and realities of Vietnam and Indonesia in particular and Southeast Asia at large reveals criticism about the true goals of education programs pertaining to children. Specifically, they provoke in readers questions about the role of education as a tool for national development appropriate to each political and economic context and the respect for the psychological, intellectual, and physical development of children.
This article paid attention to three types of children’s characters in Vietnamese children's literature in North Vietnam from 1945 to 1975, including children’s characters as young soldiers in the frontlines, young citizens in daily life, and role models. The goal of this body of literature was illustrated as educating young generations on patriotism, the revolutionary spirit, and civic consciousness. Our research suggests that politics in children’s literature is universal and that the power discourse of adults is an inevitable factor predominating in children’s literature. Besides, juxtaposing Vietnamese children’s literature with Southeast Asian literature helps us see that the political orientation and moral concepts in children’s literature have created a stagnation in the current pace of Vietnamese children’s literature. This paper, therefore, contributes to identifying Vietnamese children’s literature in the overall picture of Southeast Asian children's literature in the post-colonial context.
Since the last years of the twentieth century, the approach to children's literature from ecocriticism has been discussed in academic fora around the world, especially in the US and Europe. In Southeast Asia, with the foundation of the ASEAN Association of Environment and Literature in 2016, there have been scholarly discussions about the capacity of children's literature to enhance ecological awareness in the region. In Vietnam, since the early years of the 21st century, with the increasing reception of ecocriticism from outside, children’s literary works have become the subject of ecocriticism. This article examines scholarly works approaching children's literature in Vietnam, pointing out how they elucidate messages about environmental education. By studying Vietnamese ecocritical scholarship of various types including research, commentaries, and criticism on children’s literature, this article argues that ecological education is a prominent feature in the relationship between ecocriticism and children's literature in Vietnam. As such, Vietnamese ecocriticism of children's literature shares the prominent argument of international materials on children's literature and ecocriticism, particularly in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asian detective stories and their scholarships have shown new understandings of justice and identity in this region. This study on Vietnamese detective stories in the early twenty-first century contributes to post-colonial discourses to reflect how colonial structures were constructed and reconstructed from the past until now. Starting with transnational characters and contexts, we demonstrate the subversion revealed in the way the perpetrator-victim are transposed and their motivations for the crimes. The Vietnamese detective novelists adjust the conventions of detective stories to address these issues of law, ethics, and truth that arise in the post-colonial context. These multidimensional narratives of crime and justice also serve as resistance to the grand narratives of power that have dominated Vietnam for years.
At the dawn of the 20th century, Southeast Asian female poets increasingly delved into introspective reflections on gender, giving rise to a heightened self-awareness in their artistic contemplations. This shift in perspective brought forth numerous crucial topics for discussion, such as the historical role of female poets, women’s experiences, feminine language, female voices, and female identity. The exploration of language has empowered female poets to discover a “third space” that allows them to exist and eliminate the pervasive gaps of women in Southeast Asia, creating social changes, fostering concepts of feminine culture, and establishing progressive social institutions. Marjorie Evasco (1953-) and Dư Thị Hoàn (1947 - ) are exemplary representatives of contemporary Southeast Asian women’s poetry due to their significant artistic contributions and pivotal roles in promoting feminist literature in their respective countries. This study compares their poetic works, focusing on three crucial aspects: self-awareness of femininity and feminism as an identity autonomy, writing between two languages to express their identities, and constructing the image of mother and motherhood from personal and historical perspectives. Hence, the article highlights that Southeast Asian female poets, throughout different historical contexts, persistently forge their identities and strive for equal footing with men in society. Also, their invaluable contributions have significantly enriched the feminist literary tradition in Asia.
Southeast Asian cities like Manila, the Philippines, and Singapore have witnessed economic, political, and cultural changes over the years, especially after periods of colonization. States control their urban fabric—that is, its organization, planning, and design of cities—and thus dictate the flow of capital and forces of labor. Urban poor settlements, an offshoot of capital accumulation, are (re)moved around these cities in accordance with governing visions of development. For populations that are forced into changes brought about by urban development, practices of remembering are also controlled by dominant powers. These “monuments” are established in/as spaces to oblige an image of membership into a society ruled by such powers. Nevertheless, alternate sites of remembering counter these monumental spaces. This paper takes an interest in two novels that feature such places. Liwayway Arceo's Canal de la Reina (1972) and Suchen Christine Lim’s The River’s Song (2013) both figure rivers in Manila and Singapore, respectively. The eponymous river is the central axis of Canal de la Reina, entangled in class conflict and swift urban change in post-Commonwealth Manila. In The River’s Song, the famous Singapore River provides a refuge for reminiscing about Singapore before the city-state’s independence. Comparing these novels to what Filipino comparatist Ruth Jordana Pison calls fictional “counter-memory,” we argue that their rivers remember personal and embodied experiences eliminated from hegemonic accounts of the city. Thus, they function as what we call “counter-monuments” for the urban poor marginalized in the history of the Philippines and Singapore.
In the 1960s, the Aoheng, a small tribal group with immense territories on the upper Mahakam River, began out-migrating to downstream settlements in search of better living conditions. A trickle of young men, then their families, and more sizable groups, they settled in various towns along the river. In Samarinda, the provincial capital, they came to form a community of several hundred. When the powerful forest product boom (c. 1990) for the P. R. China market opened up the hinterland to extractive ventures, many Aoheng returned home to protect their rich natural resources from forceful outsiders. After 1998, decentralization policies established scores of new provinces, regencies, and districts across the country. Soon, West-Kutai was created as the interior “Dayak” regency, upstream and autonomous from the Moslem-Malay coastal regions. Coal mining and oilpalm plantations massively intensified, while Sendawar, its capital, offered hundreds of civil-service jobs and business opportunities. In 2012, West-Kutai was split to create yet another regency, Upper-Mahakam, prompting robust Aoheng reflux/return moves toward its upstream capital, Ujoh-Bilang. Already open to wild-frontier-style inroads by outsiders, it will soon be flooded by industrial ventures. The Aoheng, bound to become a minority in their own district, are struggling to defer their inevitable final dissolution.