Formation of Intellectuals

Abstract:

What would happen if Thai, Cambodian, and Laotian scholars became the knowledge-producers, experts, and advisers `reading’ the political situation in Quebec? How, for example, would International Observers from Southeast Asia observe and analyze the upcoming Canadian Elections on Oct. 19 -- from a comparative perspective?  How do East Timorese guerrillas `read’ and interpret Canadian foreign policy towards Indonesia during its occupation of East Timor? How would Odahwah Natives read being wiped-out of signification from `Ottawa’? How do Filipinos in Canada research and write about their `invisibility’ and citizenship? Does class, privilege, race, gender, positionality, and cultural background play a strong part in shaping our worldview and knowledge-production? How do we `know’ what we know? What are the `hidden forces’ (methodologies, paradigms, and sources) that shape our knowledge production? Twenty-six years ago, I became `almost Canadian’. Sometimes it takes people from the `outside’ to make you realize something new that has been under your nose for so long, something nobody living the everyday of a particular community ever questioned because it felt `so natural’. This paper examines the problem of power and inequalities in the production of knowledge between Canada (and the U.S., Europe, Australia more generally) and Southeast Asia, including the weakness of language-based research and the continuing domination of a `rule of experts’ and specific forms of knowledge-economies. The simple fact of reversing the gaze invites self-questioning and thinking about our own gaze and the people/societies we are `studying’, whatever our field, by suddenly having ourselves and our society be the `object of scrutiny’. What kinds of new methods of international cooperation and `engagement’ without domination can possibly emerge then?

Keynote speech, Canadian Council of Southeast Asian Studies Conference 2015, forthcoming. See: https://ccseas2015.wordpress.com/