MQKN: Tak Hanya tentang Kitab Kuning!

Dari namanya, Musabaqah Qiratul Kutub atau Lomba Baca Buku, orang mungkin akan mengira bahwa ajang ini hanya akan mengadu kemampuan para "olimpian" dalam membaca buku-buku klasik pesantren. Awalnya memang demikian, tetapi untuk penyelenggaraan MQK tingkat nasional di Lamongan kemarin (10-18 Juli 2023), lombanya sudah diperluas. 

Bil khusus MQK tahun ini sudah ditambah dengan masuknya lomba debat qanun (sepadan dengan debat konstitusi di perguruan tinggi) dan debat Bahasa Arab/Inggris yang mengangkat tema-tema sosial keislaman kontyemporer. Catatan berikut adalah catatan khusus yang saya buat untuk debat Bahasa Inggris, yang kebetulan saya alami sendiri dalam posisi sebagai anggota dewan hakim. Mari kita pilah diskusinya dalam beberapa aspek.

Secara umum, debat sudah berlangsung dengan baik dan lancar. Bahkan kami bisa selesaikan lebih cepat dari jadwal. Tentu hal ini bisa terjadi berkat kerja sama yang baik dari berbagai pihak. Khususnya, panitia yang selalu gercap dan siap. 

Kami juga sudah "dirumat" dengan baik. Tiggal di hotel yang nyaman, transportasi yang siap sedia, makanan yang mengundang selera. Nyaris tidak ada yang perlu dikritik dari aspek penyelenggaraan umum kegiatan lomba ini. Perfect and well done!  

Maka, catatan berikut mungkin tidak penting dan hanya untuk peningkatan ke depan saja.

1. Format debat

Saya menemukan komentar yang memprtanyakan debat yang digunakan. "Ini model debat apa koq ada tanya jawabnya? Australia bukan, British juga bukan!" Sebagai hakim, saya tidak dapat menjawab pertanyaan terkait format ini karena kami memang tidak terlibat menentukan format. Pembagian tugas di MQK ini tegas dan jelas bahwa hakim hanya bertugas menilai pada hari H. Maka, maka juga tidak terlibat dalam menentukan tema dan teknisnya.

Tetapi, jika saya boleh menjawab pertanyaan tersebut, saya akan berkata demikian. Apakah format debat memang harus mengikuti yang sudah ada? Menurut saya tidak. Apalagi, ini debat dalam tradisi pesantren. Saya malah usul agar kita mengembangkan debat versi kita sendiri yang bergaya khas pesantren. Agak lucu ketika saya mendengar peserta pro mengklaim sebagai pihak "goverment", dan kontra sebagai "opposition" padahal temanya, misalnya tentang penafsiran ulang fiqih zakat, tidak terkait pemerintahan.

2. Hakim yang "super netral"

Seperti saya sebutkan di poin pertama, kami benar-benar pada posisi yang netral karena kami memang tidak terlibat dalam menentukan format dan tema. Kami baru tahu tema debat itu sehari seblum lomba. Kami juga tidak diberi tahu siapa pesertanya dan jumlahnya berapa. Pun kami sendiri juga menahan diri untuk dari mencari tahu. 

Netralitas semacam ini ada plus minusnya. Dengan tidak terlibat di proses menuju lomba debat, kami mungkin terjaga dari main mata dengan tim-tim tertentu yang mungkin ada hubungan dengan kami. Misalnya, karena saya orang Jogja, saya akan membocorkannya ke tim Jogja (yang untungnya tidak mengirim delegasi!).

Tetapi, karena kami tidak terlibat sejak awal, kami tidak bisa memberikan respon yang cepat ketika ada masalah di lapangan. Bagaimana ketika ada tim yang tidak punya lawan, ketika lawan tidak hadir, atau ketika ada kasus kontingen yang mengirim lebih dari dua regu.

Demikian juga dengan tema-teman debat yang menurut kami non debatable. Misalnya, apakah Fiqih perlu direformulasi? Jawabnya tentu tidak kontroversial: semua sepakat bahwa Fikih itu selalu mengalami pembaharuan demi pembaharuan, direformulasi terus menerus. Susah membangun argumen yang antri reformulasi!

Dalam debat bahasa Inggris ini, temanya ternyata diajukan dalam bentuk pertanyaan, bukan pernyataan. Ini agak tidak lazim karena kalau bentuknya pertanyaan, maka jawabanya akan terbuka, tidak hanya terbelah dalam pro dan kontra. Bisa saja dijawab dengan jalan tengah!

3. Debat di MQK selanjutnya

Saya juga mencatata beberapa hal yang menurut saya bisa diperbaiki di masa depan agar kita bisa menyelenggarakan debat ini lebih baik.

- Perlu pedoman teknis yang terpisah dari lomba baca kitab. Ini dua kategori lomba yang berbeda dan harusnya sejak dari awal kita perlakukan berbeda.

- Bagaimana pun, juri perlu dilibatkan dalam menetapkan tema. Jika perlu, bikin FGD dewan juri untuk menentukan tema

- Jika mengacu kepada tema umum lomba kali ini, "rekonstektualisasi turats", sebaiknya peserta diberitahu bahwa tema-tema yang didebatkan harus dibaca dari sudut pandang turats ini. Jangan dari sudut pandang "pemerintah" dan "oposisi"

- Ada banyak hal detil yang belum diatur, seperti penentuan lawan bagi peserta ganjil atau lawan yang tidak datang. Teknis penjurian juga perlu diperdetil sampai kepada cara menilai, persentase, dan cara menilai.   

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The Making of the Global: The Case of Asian Values Debate (1)

In preparing the World Conference on Human Rights in Geneva, June 1993, representatives of Asian countries from Iran to Mongolia met in Bangkok. Despite recognizing that human rights are universal in nature, the Bangkok Declaration boldly insisted that “they must be considered in the context of a dynamic and evolving process of international norm-setting, bearing in mind the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds.”[1] The Bangkok Declaration was one of many messages Asian leaders sent to mainly the West (a term conveniently means Europe and North America), arguing that there is a unique set of “Asian values” different from presumably “Western values”.

Since then, the “political thesis” of Asian values has triggered a rich academic literature both in the West and the East. One of the most important issues in the discourse of “Asian values” is the very question whether there are really any “Asian values”. The proponent of Asian values typically based their argument on cultural relativism. In this argument, there is no way to judge other values on the basis of one’s own values. The proponents of human rights, on the other hand, argue that human rights are universal in their nature and need no local particularities. Nowadays we hardly hear the debate again. The arguably recent silence of the discourse might be related to the fact that the vocal defenders of the Asian values have left their leadership posts. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, the strong defender of Confucian-based Asian values, has retired. Mahathir Mohamad, the little Soekarno of Malaysia, has also turned over his position to the low profile Abdullah Badawi. The economic crisis in 1997 that hit most of East and Southeast Asian countries, resulting among others in toppling the authoritarian regime and allowing the daring democratization in Indonesia, might also have silenced the proponents of Asian values.

Now, the debate is over. As the dust settled, we might be able to offer an “outsider” or “non-partisan” review on both arguments. In this paper, I proposed to read the arguments of the proponents and the opponents to find what did really happen behind the over-discussed substance of Asian values. My hypothesis is that the Asian values debate was a process of making “globalization”. By the “globalization” here, however, I do not mean either an already made a global entity that comes, meets, and conquers locals in the way of domination, or less likely the victory of the West over the rest. I argue instead that in the making of Global there is a process of taking and giving, an exchange, a mutual share of what constitutes the global. To put it differently, globalization is not a matter of conquering a local by the global, but rather a making of the global entity by many locals. I believe the global is an intertwined network among “winning” elements of locals.

To break down my argument, the paper will review firstly the possible origin of Asian values discourse in the history of East-West relationship. I suggest that the “Asianess” was shaped by both colonialism and Orientalism. On the one hand, seen from Edward Said’s criticism, colonialism and Orientalism constitute a long Western political and intellectual domination over the East. But, on the other hand, that the long encounter of colonialism and Orientalism also allows a process of what Mary Louis Pratt calls “transculturation”,[2] the ability of the dominated, colonized, or subjected subjects to determine what they absorb into their own and what use it for.

Next to that historical tracking, I will present the international context of 1990s to make sense how the “Asian values” debate was staged. Some theoretical prophecies, particularly those of Fukuyama and Huntington, are worth discussing to uncover the broader discourse of world system and cultural divide. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism in East Europe promised a New Era on which those international politics gurus argue for their respective thesis. Finally, in the section following that broader discursive context, we will look at the Asian values debate trough the transculturation-lens to argue that the globalization is a process of making the Global by many locals, where the ideas and discourses emanated from the dominant culture are contested and selected by locals. The emanating local and the emanated then altogether make the global. With regard to particularly Fukuayama’s thesis, this Global is not the liberal democracy he once theorized.

The Origin of an “Asianess”

The term “Asian values” was actually coined years earlier than many scholars suggested. Even though we do not know exactly when, at least there is an evident of its use in 1970s. In 1976 the Department of Philosophy University of Singapore hosted a seminar whose topic was “Asian Values and Modernisation”. One of the papers presented in the seminar is by Ho Wing Meng, the published version of which is available for this research.[3] When reading this paper, one can find at least two impressions. First, in 1970s the concept of Asian values was discussed in a context of finding a way to “develop” Asian countries – development in the sense of broader discourse of developmentalism ideology in the Third World in 1970s. Second, what was being questioned at that time is whether or not Asian values, if any, was supportive for the modernization of Asia. Third, in answering such a question, Ming himself doubted the existence of so-called Asian values because the very Asia consisted of various cultures not similar one and another. He argues that the term Asian values should denote not to a particular, stereotyped, attitude or belief, but rather the great diversities in Asia.[4]

The genealogy of the discourse even might date further back. The long history of imperialism heavily affected the way Asians see themselves and the colonial powers (most of them were European). Being the victim of the long Western exploitative project of colonialism, most Asians have no hard time to see any Western presence as another form of imperialism. In 1950s and 1960s, anti-imperialism was really a popular rhetoric for Asian leaders to rally support either domestically or internationally.[5] This psychological condition is nowhere else more obvious than in the Asian-African Summit in Bandung. In 1955, when the world were increasingly divided along the two western blocks of Communism and Capitalism, for the first time in the history the newly independent Asian-African nations met in Bandung, Indonesia. In considering the “new imperialism” of the US and Soviet Union, the nations in the conference declared their non-alignment position. The Declaration of Bandung is considerably the first “coalition of willing”, similar to the Bangkok Declaration 38 years later, in challenging the Western political and discursive presences in the East.[6]

Along with the long political imperialism, the root of “Asian values” is the Orientalism, “a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience.”[7] Even though Orientalism as a discipline, style of thought, and institution was developed in the West and mainly for the Western audience, its influence in staging the world system—supported by the European political colonialism—reached the non-Western mindset and remains influential through the colonial legacy in the East. For example, as Said put it, most universities in Arab world are generally run according to some pattern inherited from, or once directly imposed by, a former colonial power.[8] As they become a satellite of Orientalism, the students of the Orientalist in the East reproduce, mimicry, discourses once produced in the West. The beliefs and conceptions of self distinguished “Asianess” in the arguments of Asian values arguably are sorts of “self-Orientalism”, or “Occidentalism” if you will.

Continued to part 2

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The Making of the Global: The Case of Asian Values Debate (2)

The Victory of Liberal Democracy: The End of History? The long post war rivalry between the American-led Capitalist West and the Soviet-led Communist East, or the Cold War, surprisingly ended in the dusk of 1980s. The giant empire of Soviet Union dissolved in a matter of months. The Berlin Wall, serving 28 years demarcating the two Western competing ideologies of post war, was soon destroyed and the two Germany reunited. In the summer of 1989, amid this ongoing collapse of Communism in the East Europe, Francis Fukuyama wrote the most discussed article “the End of History”. He argued that liberal democracy had conquered rival ideologies like hereditary, monarchy, fascism and communism. Accordingly, liberal democracy will constitute “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and it therefore marked “the end of history”.[9]

In Fukuyama’s thesis, there are no boundaries between the West and the East because liberal democracy will eventually be the only ideology prevails. Liberal democracy is the form of government, Fukuyama insists, humanity has been longing for. Liberal democracy is a form of polity where liberal values, liberty and equality, were preserved along with the all citizens’ right to share political power trough democratic mechanism. More specifically, Fukuyama refers to Lord Bryce’ definition of liberal rights that include: civil right, “the exemption from control of the citizen in respect of his person and property”; religious rights, “exemption from control in the expression of religious opinions and the practice of worship”; and political rights, “exemption from control in matters which do not so plainly affect the welfare of the whole community as to render control necessary”.[10] As his thesis argues that liberal democracy will be the final form of polity, it is these values that will dominate all over the world, either West or East. Fukuyama has many reasons to argue for his thesis. First, there are now more democracies than in any time in the history. The percentage of democracies to its rivalry systems, according to Freedom House, increased over time: 0% in 1900, 14.3% in 1950, and 62.5% in 2000.[11] Second, related to the first one, democracy works in any place in the world. Representations of democratic states vary from the South Africa to Middle Eastern Turkey or “Chinese” Taiwan. Based on the map of world freedom, there is no reason to be pessimistic about spreading democracy all over the world.[12] And third, there is no seemingly significant competing ideology now, after the collapse of communism, and in the near future. In his account on Islam, a religion whose ideology often poses a political threat in the Western mind, Fukuyama believes that its “cultural conquest” is over. Islam might win back “the lapsed adherents but has no resonance for the young people in Berlin, Tokyo, Moscow” In fact, Islamic countries are vulnerable of being liberalized and democratized.[13] Fukuyama’s thesis was controversial and many have criticized his points.

The most important one is Samuel Huntington. In his article “The Clash of Civilizations?” published one year later after Fukuyama’s, Huntington dismissed thesis based on ideological and economic factors as failing to catch the most crucial aspect of post Cold Ward global politics. Instead of expecting another episode of ideological and/or economic conflicts, he argues, the next conflict is cultural one. “The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”[14] Huntington suggests five reasons to argue for his thesis. First, differences among civilization over the course of history has created the most enduring and violent conflicts. Second, the world is more connected through communication and migration. It increases the interactions among civilization and intensifies the consciousness of one’s own civilization. Third, on the one hand the globalization erodes long-standing local identities that are then replaced by larger identity, most importantly religious identities. Fourth, the Western domination triggered the increasingly cultural-consciousness civilizations to challenge the Western domination. And the last one is that cultural characteristics are less mutable. Ideological difference is simply a preference that one could easily move from one to another choice. By contrast, culture is identity and it is not acquainted by choice, but rather given.

Those two contrasting thesis represented enough the broader discourse of 1990s when the Asian values debate reached its international attention. Huntington’s thesis is based on the idea that culture matters and in this way the international system is staged in cultural units. The cultural divide determines the international relation after the end of the clash of ideologies and replaces it. On the other hand, Fukuyama does not buy cultural arguments. According to him, “the problem with this kind of cultural argument is that developed cultural systems like Christianity, Islam, and Confucianism are highly complex.”[15] Fukuyama puts forward a strong example of the implicit debate between the two Lees, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan. Lee Kuan Yew has attracted considerable attention by arguing that Confucianism supports a certain kind of political authoritarianism; while Lee Teng-hui calls on his Confucian scholars to provide an evident that indeed there is a democratic precedence in Confucianism.

Bearing in mind these two main theoretical approaches, cultural and ideological approaches, in the next section we will deal with the arguments of the proponents and opponents of the Asian values. Our focus is to see how this debate is part of a larger process of making the global trough “transculturation” where the “subjected” locals determine how far they absorb and also influence the “dominant” local. The different status between the “subjected” and the “dominant” is mainly a result of economic and political gaps. In making the global, however, the two contribute their respective share through transculturation. The Asian Values Debate: Ambiguity and Defend The ideologically borderless world system in 1990s after the collapse of communism opened a question about the future of the world system. Fukuyama and Huntington propose different thesis, one ideological (the victory of liberal democracy) and the other cultural. In either way the West and its liberal democracy pose a challenge to the rest, either as a future single ideology or a cultural hegemon.

The rise of liberal democracy as a “winning” ideology in the West of 1990s posed both a threat and a promise to the Rest, depending on who was seeing it. For the illiberal regimes of Asia, the rise of liberal democracy was a threat to their establishment. For the liberal element in Asian society, however, the rise of liberal democracy was a promise. The democratization movement in Indonesia, for example, welcomes the change in Europe and this change energized their struggle against the authoritarian regime. And the debate of Asian values was certainly part of their reactive or supportive responds to the challenge posed by the liberal democracy as the “winning element” in the West. My conception of “winning element” is important because it maintains the fact that the West has never been a single ideological unit. There were and are ideological elements competing in the geographically western part of the world. In 1990s it was the liberal democratic element that won the competition. This winning element then represents the West when it is conceived in an oppositional binary of East-West. There were and are likewise competing elements within the geographically eastern part of the world. And in early 1990s, the conservative illiberal element won the competition in the most part of Asia. This was then who represent the East in that long discursive confrontation of the East-West. The Asian values debate at all was part of this competing ideological configuration. Looking to the papers, articles, book written on the Asian values in 1990s, one would easily find that within Asia itself there were those who promote Asian values and those who criticize the argument.

In responding the rise of the winning liberal democracy in the West, the Asians values debate provides three different answers. First group are those who reject both democracy and liberalism. Second group accepts democracy, but not liberalism. And the third accepts both liberalism and democracy. Lee Kuan Yew is one of those in the first group. Democracy, according to him, is not an appropriate form of government for Asia. He argues, “what a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy. Democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions.”[16] Liberalism, emphasizing on individual over the community, is also not fit into “communitarian” Asian. “The Confucianist view of order between subject and ruler helps in the rapid transformation of society… in other words, you fit yourself into society – the exact opposite of the Americans rights of the individual.”[17] The second group accepts democracy, but not liberalism. Mahathir Mohamad is one of them. In his short book, the Asian Values Debate, he believes that part of Malaysian success is because of its democracy. But, he quickly added, that not all democracy is good. “There is good and productive democracy as well as bed and destructive democracy.”[18] What he conceived as a bad democracy he rejects is the one that cannot solve “social problem”,[19] implying democracy with excessive individualism. Another politician in this camp, the Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, promotes what he called “pragmatic democracy”, a sort of democracy where the government acts as a trustee, “it exercises independent judgment on what is in long-term economic interest of the people and acts on that basis. Government policy is not dictated by opinion poll or referenda.”[20] The third group, consisting mainly of human right and democracy activist, welcome the liberal democracy as a universal value.[21]

Whether it originates from the West or has indigenous root in Asia, Asia needs [liberal] democracy because this is the only regime that upholds the autonomy of the individual and the individual’s right to participate in government. The concern of this group is that non-liberal democracy oftentimes abuses human rights in the name of societal order, appropriating what to be claimed as a community at the expense of individual. Even though these three groups pose a different level of encountering liberal democracy, it is the worth noting that none does completely reject the West as a whole. Lee Kuan Yew once stated, “As an East Asian looking at America, I find attractive and unattractive features. I like, for example, the free, easy and open relations between people regardless of social status, ethnicity and religion… I find parts of it totally unacceptable… The expansion of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he pleases has come at the expense of orderly society.”[22] Mahathir, on similar fashion, is also conscience of the fact that not all Asian values are good. Next to his fierce criticism to what he sees as the cultural threat of the West, he also criticizes some Asian values. This part is interesting because what he finds bad in Asian values are those the liberal democracy criticizes: authoritarianism, repression of women, inequality, and some issues that concern individuals like inferiority and lack of self confidence.[23] The acceptance and, at the same time, rejection is also evident in the language of the Bangkok Declaration[24]. This is the declaration on which Asian countries were united to voice a challenge against “the human rights crusade” of the West and later triggered the Asian values debate.

The document indeed does not question the declaration of human rights, promotion of human rights, or ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It instead supports human rights both as a value or a legal right of every human being. It simply does not like that “the other” intervenes their countries or that the human rights are used as a political means. In addition to that “ambiguity” (acceptance and rejection) the Asian values debate was articulated in a defensive way. Asian leaders do not reject the presumably Western values itself, but rather “unfortunate” excessive Western discursive presence during 1990s.

The discourse of human rights and democracy itself was an excess of euphoria after its victory over communism at a time when Asian countries in its hot economic growth that gave them confidence to walk on their own way. Mahathir’s statement in defending Asian values was very deep, “Why then must we change ourselves to suit the West and their values. Why are so many in the West insisting that we become just like them. This the strong among us will not do. The weak unfortunately have little choice.”[25] Similarly, Singaporean Goh Chok Tong once said, “We find it necessary, from time to time, like a good father would, to help members of the family to progress. The West say, ‘Why are you interfering?’ but we have a different problem and we have to solve it our way.”[26] It is in these ambiguity and defensive arguments that the negotiation in the ideologically borderless world of 1990s occurred.

Politically and economically weaker before the stronger West, Asia might be subjugated. But Asia was not that weak — at least that was what Mahathir believes. If we look at these three arguments, it seems that the discourse of liberal democracy was absorbed in Asia in three different levels, from totally rejection to totally absorption, depending on whom and in what position he/she is. The liberal democracy, happening to represent the West, and its “Asian values” counterpart, happening to represent the ruling elites in Asia, interact in a way that would define the global map as a whole. The Asian values debate was the process of negotiating political, economic, and cultural power in the making of the world today, the world that is not fully democratic neither liberal.

Continued to part 3

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The Making of the Global: The Case of Asian Values Debate (3)

Conclusion: Transculturation and the Making of the Global

The Asian values debate occurred more than a decade ago. It was a story of the raising liberal democracy (with its capitalistic economy) after conquering its long rival Communism. Its rise as a candidate of single ideology poses a challenge to the rest of the world as it expanded beyond its geographical border. For the East, the once victim of Western colonialism and not fully recovering from its past, the West once again presents as a looming threat. Haunted by its past, the East’s respond to this challenge were various, from rejecting the liberal-democratic-capitalistic West to accepting it.

We also noticed that the debate over Asian values occurred within Asia itself. While it is true that the arguments for the Asian values were mainly addressed to the West as an answer to its looming ideological domination; it was debated among communitarian-conservative Asians and liberal-progressive Asians who demanded change and found the liberal-democracy in the West as a momentum endorsing them to fight against the establishment. Their debate clearly involved their political, economic, and academic positions. Most political elites were in a defensive position relative to their threatened political position in the case their country embraced liberal-democracy. The oppressed civil movement activists, on the other hand, support liberal-democracy because it takes their side. It might remind us to one of Said’s points that ideas cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or their configurations of power, also being studied.[27] The idea of Asian values is not an exception.

The debate is a locus to study transculturation as well. If we look at parts of Asia today, the process of transculturation involving the Asian values debate a decade ago continues to shape the region. Unlike what Fukuyama theorized, liberal democracy has not yet become the single winning ideology in Asia. It is also not the case that the clash of civilization colorizes Asia’s relation to the rest of the world. Some parts of Asia are liberalized, but some are not. Indonesia, South Korea, and Taiwan, apart the sui generic Japan, are on the march to liberal democracy. Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, are struggling with their threatened democracy. Other parts of Southeast Asia are still under non-democratic regimes. Needles to say, China, the biggest stake holder of Asia, is the most interesting case for transculturation. It is the place where capitalism was absorbed within its changing socialism and democracy is experimented in the village level.[28]

This map of Asia is just another face of the once debated Asian values in its current expressions. No debate anymore, but Asians are working in adapting the “foreign” ideas to their own use. Altogether, these colorful Asian faces (from democratic to authoritarian) is inseparable part of what we conceive as the global, and not a terra incognita in the global map where the Global will eventually conquers it.
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[1] http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu5/wcbangk.htm
[2] More on this concept see Mary Louis Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1991, p. 6
[3] Ho Wing Meng, Asian Values and Modernisation – a critical interpretation, Singapore: Department of Philosophy, University of Singapore, 1976.
[4] Ibid., p. 11.
[5] F. S. C. Northrop, Asian Mentality and United States Foreign Policy, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 276, Lessons from Asia.(Jul., 1951), p. 126
[6] For an analisys on its impact to the East Asia soon after the Summit, see C. P. Fitzgerald, “East Asia after Bandung”, Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 24, No. 8. (Aug., 1955), pp. 113-119.
[7] Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books, 1994, p.1
[8] Ibid., p. 322.
[9] Francis Fukuyama, The end of History and the Last Man, New York: Free Press; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1992, p.xi.
[10] Ibid., pp. 42-43.
[11] http://web.archive.org/web/20050307102714/http://www.freedomhouse.org/reports/century.html#table1
[12] http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=20&year=2006
[13] Francis Fukuyama, The end of History and the Last Man, p. 46
[14] Samuel P. Huntington, “The clash of civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs Vol. 72, No. 3, Summer, 1993, p. 22.
[15] Francis Fukuyama, “the Illusion of Exceptionalism”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1997), p. 148.
[16] From The Economist, 27 April 1994, p. 5, as quoted by Kenneth Cristie and Denny Roy (eds), The Politics of Human Rights in East Asia, London: Pluto Press, 2001, p. 1.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Mahathir Mohamad, the Asian Values Debate, Kuala Lumpur: the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, 1997, p. 9.
[19] Ibid., p. 11.
[20] As quoted by Bilahari Kausian, “The Asian Values Debate: A View from Singapore”, in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (eds.), Democracy in East Asia, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1998, p. 20.
[21] See Margaret, Ng, “Why Asia Needs Democracy: A view from Hong Kong” in Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (eds.), Democracy in East Asia, pp. 1-16.
[22] As quoted by David Kelly, “Freedom as an Asian value”, in Michael Jacobsen and Ole Bruun (eds.), Human Rights and Asian Values: Contesting National Identities and Cultural Representations in Asia, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2000, p. 182.
[23] Ibid., p. 8.
[24] The online version is available at http://law.hku.hk/lawgovtsociety/Bangkok%20Declaration.htm
[25] p. 4
[26] As quoted in Daniel A. Bell et al (eds.), Toward Illiberal Democracy, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995, p. 163.
[27] Edward Said, Orientalism, p. 5.
[28] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4319954.stm

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Missing the Authentic Sherpa

[This is a book review for Tigers of The Snow. To read more about this worth-reading book, please click this link.]

Before reading the conclusion, let's recall for a while what the book is about. In its introduction, Vincanne aimed at exploring what led Pasang Lhamu to get involved in the high-risk mountaineering because "she wanted to" (p.8). Vincanne, methodologically speaking, relies on a general inquiry into the creation of Sherpa identity in Western imagination and the persistent and anthropological and Western desire to find a site of authenticity beyond the Western gaze.

In doing so, she insisted, one has to recognize "the obvious role [sic] Westerners have played" in "creating" the Sherpa (p. 8 and 11). Her argument is based on the widespread image both among Sherpa and the West that becoming Sherpa is "currently" all about the people expert in mountaineering. In this very mountaineering is "originally" introduced by the West, not by Sherpa who considered the mountain itself god and goddess. To put it another way, mountaineering is not "original" identity of Sherpa.

While she argues for that "obvious" impact, however, Vincanne hopes that the readers will see the impact of Sherpas on the Westerners (p. 8 and 12, another repetition in her statements). Sherpas recruit Western Others to become their sponsors in response to Western desires to become part of the Sherpa world.

So, did she succeed? Yes, as long as those two objectives are concerned, Vincanne has successfully write in a rich and incredible ethnographic work. She does convince us both the western impact to Sherpa in creating the images of the Tigers the snow and the reversal impact of Sherpa on the Westerners. However, only in a way we accept her basic assumptions.

Let's see the other ways. Instead of seeing mountaineering as a created identity, why don't we see it as finding the unexplored gift Sherpas have as the people of the mountain? The gift had been there before the West introduce mountaineering as a business. Why did she think (p.7) that "the idea that one climbed because one "wanted to" belong, originally, to Westerners? I just don't understand that the non-Western subjects do not have such a strong desire. I found it as a kind of a racist bias. It was not a European, unfortunately, who explored the world just because he "wanted to"; The north African Ibn Batuta and Chinese Cheng Ho did it before Marcopolo and Columbus.

She also failed to recognize the very process of how Sherpa maintaining their "original" identity. While she argues for Western impact in the adoption of medical approach to the sickness; she undermines the way Sherpas change their names to avoid bad luck as a very original ideas of Sherpa's body. She failed to recognize this as a set of very significant belief she should deal with in her research and simply refers it as a "problem" she cannot accept with her Western perspective."I found that Sherpas I met were difficult to keep track of..." (p.240)

Finally, I find a dilemma in her work or in broader academic works . The relationship between Sherpa and their jindaks is a short of emotional and spiritual experiences. As I experienced myself, such an "meta-experiment" is beyond our cognitive experiences writeable in a rational academic discourses. I do regret how she reads that sincere and friendly letter as simply a proof to explain how Sherpa create a worldwide jindaks network (p. 220-221). With her Western and academic biases, she also fail to understand the complex world of religious belief when she found the local interpretations of Kami's death as simply a naive strategy of preserving "transnational" images of "true Sherpa". For the people of religion, particularly the pious one, becoming true Buddhist or Muslim has nothing to do with reputation. It's about next lives.

In those latter ways, she missed the authentic Sherpa, the one that lies beyond the Western gaze...

(By the way, sorry that I posted my respond earlier; I am preparing myself
for the Super Bowl day... uh, another example of how non-American students mimicry the host country )

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SAID, PRATT, AND COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS

Imperialism used to be justified, even glorified. When its time was over in 1960s, its legacies continue. Discursive colonialism, if I can use this term, seems to be lasting because it has been embedded in the civic society rather than in the political society —the one that had been decolonized during the Post War II. To decolonize the civic society and knowledge is as hard as the bloody political decolonization. In this regard, it might not be an exaggeration to say that this effort of decolonizing the colonial legacy begun when Edward W. Said, thanks to Gramsci and Foucault, launches his ground-breaking work Orientalism (1979).

Said’s Orientalism has successfully unraveled the complex hidden power/knowledge relation in the Orientalist approach to the East. Characterized by a notion of distinct other culture (race, religion, or civilization), Orientalism has neglected human experience. Overwhelmed by a sense of self-congratulation or hostility and aggression, Orientalism had contributed to Euroimperalism and hegemony. While some his critics misinterpreted him as generalizing, put together all different voices in single category of Orientalists, and demonizing the West, Said work has been a helpful to be reminder of knowledge as the tool for all humanity.

Said’s criticism was focused on the West, and there are two possible answers one could give: Occidentalism or Orientalism in reverse, a study about the Occident, the one that Said has anticipated but not expected; or a study focused on how the East had reacted to the Western hegemony.

In Said’s Orientalism, so powerful is the Western hegemony that the East is merely a represented and powerless object and it pays little attention to how the East reacts to that hegemony.[1] In this regard, Mary Louis Pratt’s work, Imperial Eyes: Travel Wiritng and Transculturation does rightly fill this gap. Her “authoethnography”, particularly help us understand how the Orient, the colonized subjects, “undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer’s own term” (Pratt, 1992: 7). It is not a “native” or “genuine” text of self-representation; but rather a “hybrid” because it happens in “the contact zone” where the colonized subject rely partially on collaboration with, and adoption of, the idioms of the conquer.

Said, Pratt, and the Readings

On the readings we have been trough, we seemingly will not be able to use those theories for all travel writings. Said’s criticism helps us much in reading travel writings written by Westerners whose potential audience are the Westerners, or when the writing is written by colonizing subjects for colonizing readers. We can apply his strategy to read Mungo Park’s Travels in the Interior of Arica, Isabella Bird’s Korea and Her Nighbors, as well as Yosano Akiko’s Man-mo Yuki. All of these works involve what Prett calls “imperial eyes” —whether the imperial is Western Europe or Japan— and written by the “seeing-man”. In these work, as Said argues about Orientalism, the West/the imperial were able to both “present”, with their travel to the East, or the colonized Manchuria, and able “represent” them to the fellow colonizing subjects.

While Said himself never applied his criticism those “popular writing”, focusing his on academic writing in 19th century, Pratt’s work help us to critically read travel writings, as a genre, and find power relation in the less academic works, the apparently “innocent” non-political writings. I like the way she reads what in Park’s wordings that look objective, natural, innocent (after he was robbed, alone and have nothing), as indeed a projection of European goodness and African wildness (p. 77). Without her smart reading, I likely could not have read that way.

In Pratt’s “contact zone” and “transculturation”, however, the power/knowledge relation is more complicated than in Said’s because, to her, the colonized subjects in colonial frontiers are able to determine an extent to which they absorb what emanate from the dominant culture. In this sense, while Europe is shaping others, it is in fact shaped by others (by the way they represent themselves to Europe). Said’s work, as far as the reciprocal process is concerned, will no longer help. Therefore, we need Pratt’s “contact zone” and “transculturation” to read a “hybrid” literature like Poma’s letter. I wish I could have read her interpretation of Poma’s letter to see how far she can argue for her theory. Judging only from the picture illustrated in the first chapter, in which biblical reference of Adam and Eva is used along with Andean symbolic space, I think her argument could be convincing. It must be interesting to fully read her readings in chapter 8 where she analyze how Spanish American writers selected and adapted European discourses on America.

So now, we have already two kinds of analytical tools to read different genres. On the one hand, Said’s criticism works well for literature written by Westerners, for Western readers, in their own terms and languages (if you let me call them “ethnographically not sensitive Orientalism”). On the other, Prett’s work is great tool to analyze literature written by non-Western subjects, for both Western audience and their own society, and using a hybrid discourse. But, colonial encounters involve more than those two genres. There is also a literature written by non-Western subjects, using non-Western languages, and representing the West for non-West.
Coincidently, some of our readings, from Xu Jiyu’s account on “George Washington and the American Political System”, Zhigang on “Trains and Treaties”, to Li Gui’s “Glimpses of a Modern Society” are the genre neither Said nor Pratt has dealt with because it was written by Chinese, in Chinese, and for Chinese audience.

We obviously cannot call them “Orientalism” and it is also hard to call them an “Orientalism in reverse.” Not because I see the Chinese writers do not have a will to dominate inherent in Orientalism; but simply because Orientalism is an academic designation, style of thought and even corporate institutions. These Chinese accounts are too raw to represent “Orientalism in reverse”.

Furthermore, these works are neither “autoethnographic” nor “authentic” or “native” accounts. First, to be autoethnographic writing, it is not about Chinese for metropolitan literature. Second, to be an authentic it does not talk about, for example, Chinese history.

However, it doesn’t mean that Pratt’s strategies are not relevant to read those Chinese travel writings. Pratt’s insistence on the importance of studying “the site of occurrence” to unravel the histories of subjugation and resistance is more than useful. We can use Pratt’s study of genre and ideology, then, in a rather modified way: how do those increasingly colonized subjects represent the West? And instead of the question “how do they justify and betray in their texts” applied to the Western literature, we should ask how do they resist or accept the Other’s power and hegemony?

I think it is only Xu Jiyu’s account that could be a purely non “autoethnographic” character of this work. Instead of using the word Chinese do not understand, he uses “Commander”. The editor of the book might think that this is a less accurate account because Xu never visited America. But I can also argue that Xu just tried to make sense America for his readers. Look at the way he makes a lot of analogies to Chinese object and discourse to help his readers: comparing Washington with Cao or Liu; the climate is like Hebei, Shanxi, Jiangsu, and Zhejian; or referring to Hongzhi period of Ming Dynasty instead of certain date to retrieve a familiar date to his readers. Even, he describes a democratic process with reference to “the old ideal of three dynasties”.

The other more recent accounts on America, which are travel writings, represented America in different way, on which we can use Pratt’s strategy even more. In those works, “transculturation” occurred. In the political context where American power was raising and China was fading, the writings tend to be amazed by America. While there is a self-congratulation ideology in the writing of dominating subject; it is a self-criticism that we can find in most of that writing. I would love to read the next writings that we haven’t read in our class to know how those writings describe America more hostile.(*)

[1] Said, indeed deal with how the East react to the West. In addition that he only give a brief account, he undermines the ability of the East in resisiting the Orientalis (see p. 323-324, 1994 edition).

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