Asia in Mobility

책 소개

Preface Asia in our discussion represents not a solid but a relative and relational space generated and created by the vectors of mobility. From the mid nineteenth century to the present, globalizing impetus, following the trajectory of imperialism, has forged a dependent concept of Asia (or Orient) as the Other vis-a-vis the West. In the meantime, peoples in Asia have been creating new spaces, social and ethnic relations and lieux de memoire while experiencing and practicing otherness of the various boundaries, regimes, places, nation-states and cultures. And these mobility practices of nomad, migration, colonization, border-crossing and deterritorialization have evolved following the vectors of mobility within a constellation of histories of capitalism, war, labor, and colonization. This new conceptualization of Asia, constructed through the transnational flows that transcend the cultural, ideological, national and ethnic boundaries as well as post /Cold War divisions, is now opening up multiple but ambiguous spaces for inter-Asian cultural and political practices. What is at stake is, then, how transcultural practices of the returning migrants through the axes of mobility─whose historical origin is the imperialistic, (post) Cold War and globalizing drive and regulation, can transform Asia into a more democratic and ethical space of every day lives beyond the regional and national boundaries. From the perspective of experiences, perceptions and spatial practices of the mobile subjects, Asia can be broken down into multiple and relative spaces constantly being re-appropriated by the subjects. For example, to the North Korean defectors crossing the border between the North Korea and China, South Korea is not an ad- jacent nation but a faraway destination that can be reached only through a detouring journey via China, Mongolia, Laos and the USA. This transnational mobile subject includes ethnic minorities, migrants, undocumented sojouner, return migrants and people of the ex-colonies who are supposed to position themselves as the others and thus make Asia a relative place. To these others being caught somewhere betwixt and between places of Asia─particularly when they are mobilized in a different context from that of cosmopolitan experiences at the metropolis in this globalizing era─Asia represents not a solid and holistic concept but flexible, ambiguous and multiple spaces. Paying attention to spatial relationality of what is presumably called "Asia", SungKongHoe University Humanities Korea Project that has been organized by Institute for East Asian Studies and sponsored by the Korea Research Foundation attempts to his- toricize mobility in Asia and thus construe a new imagination of inter-Asianness.

리뷰 남기기

로그인하면 리뷰를 남길 수 있어요.

리뷰 0개