The present state of postcolonial studies has over-privileged the »English« experiences. This over-privileging might have to do with the historical experiences of the key proponents of postcolonial studies, who came out of the English (ex-)colonies, or with English having become the hegemonic language through the historical processes of English and American empire-building, with the result that any intellectual publications outside the English sphere have been rendered somewhat invisible. Indeed, once the analytical focus is shifted to different geo-colonial sites, such as the East Asian region, other imperial forces come to the forefront. Prior to the 20th century, the Chinese empire was dominant, and throughout the entire 20th century, two major forces have come to shape local-national cultural formations in the East Asian region: Japanese colonialism in the first half of the century, and US neo-imperialism in the second.

Although it could be argued that mainland China should be exempted from this Japan/US complex, my own observation is quite the opposite: since the 1980's, the »US« has been the dominant imaginary figure against which »China« constructs itself. When the CCP state launched the policy in the 1990’s of being »in tune with the world (yu shi-jie jie-guei),« the »world« actually meant the West, that is, the US. While literature on historical experiences of Japanese colonialism has been abundant, and the attempt of Japanese intellectuals to »decolonialize« and to take on wartime responsibility has been quite visible (Hanasaki 2000), studies on US imperialism and its cultural impact in East Asia seem to be lacking, not to mention the almost complete lack of discussion in critical American circles about rethinking the responsibility of American imperialism for the damage it has done the earth in the past century. I would even go so far as to argue that the February 2001 US/UK (Bush/Blair) attack on Iraq revealed the deep reality that decolonization or de-imperialization processes have not properly taken place in these (ex-)imperial centers; without larger self-reflexive movements to resist imperial nationalism, the constant complicities between critical intellectual populations and the imperial state power will happen again and again in the future.

[b]Cold War and Colonialism[/b]

How does one account for this »lack«: the lack of study of US imperialism? One strategy is to attribute the omission to the construction of the Cold War structure: the formation of the anticommunist bloc and of anticommunist ideology has effectively displaced the US imperialism question, and the arrival of the post-Cold War era might be able to reopen the political space for the question to return. There may be some truth to this argument. Cho Hee-yeon (2000) describes the post-World War II South Korean regime quite accurately - a description which equally applies to the case of Taiwan - as being authoritarian, developmentalist, statist, and anticommunist; and, one may add, pro-US. Under the Cold War structure, the right-wing political regimes in places such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan have formed close alliances with the US to combat communist enemies in order to secure their power to govern. The effectiveness of fanning anticommunist fear has not allowed any possible discursive positionality from which to pose the question of imperialism to the Big Brother¹, despite the fact that there has been mainstream anti-American sentiment and tradition across the region, with the exception of Taiwan.

Empirically, the Cold War structure in the East Asia region has not been dismantled², otherwise there would not be such excitement generated by the televisual effects of the two Kims’ Summit and the subsequent heartbreaking scenes of the family reunions, or the celebratory images of the downfall of the Koumington regime. Rather than being fully immersed and buried in the emotional politics, this is perhaps the moment to grasp the unprecedented chance to undertake the critical work necessary to »de-Cold War«. The task of »de-Cold War-ing« can be understood in the similar, parallel, connected sense of decolonization, though one has to insist on the linkage between the two intersected structures of Cold War and colonialism. To put it in general terms, decolonization work in our region has not been effectively carried out in the post-World War II era, and the Cold War structure quickly took over from the structure of colonialism. This has interrupted the conditions that make it possible for decolonization to take place. Our world view and systems of popular knowledge, of classifications, have been generated out of such systems of production at the intersection of colonialism and the Cold War. Furthermore, even if one buys into the ideological argument of the end of the Cold War, the flow of people and knowledge in the past 50 years has been structured in a way that cannot be easily erased: Cold War cultural effects have become part of our local histories and subjectivity. Just as the announcement of the end of colonialism cannot erase its cultural effects, the Cold War formation of cultural subjectivity remains with us. The post-war generation of intellectuals for higher education in South Korea and Taiwan were largely trained in the US, and these people, equipped with American imaginary, are now in a position to implement another round of the modernization project.

What are the implications of this? The announcement of the end of the Cold War will not be able to erase the historical inscription of such effects of knowledge. Although the cultural impact of the Cold War structure have not been fully explored and studied, there is still a real danger in the Cold War determinist argument: that is, outward projection, dumping the responsibility on the »outsiders« without confronting the nationalist desire for identification and even dis-identification with the culture of US imperialism. This has been the position of East Asian leftists who, for instance, blame national disintegration solely on US imperialism, which is partly, but not wholly true. Furthermore, this argument exaggerates the radical discontinuity in so-called post-Cold War politics. Writing within the context of the 1948 Cheju Island massacre (4.3 event), Seong-Nae Kim argues,

[i]The 4.3 Event and its violent closure in massacre prefigured the Korean War in 1950, the ideological battle of the Cold War which ended in stalemate with the loss of millions of lives. Although the Cold War has ended, anti-Communist ideology continues to dominate state politics in South Korea and has effectively silenced much of the memory of the 4.3 Event….[/i] (Kim, 1996).

Taking my lead from Kim's warning not to exaggerate the post-Cold War discontinuity, and not to let go the responsibility of the nationalist state and critical intellectuals, I shall argue that the effect of »colonial/imperial identification,« constructed partly by the Cold War structure, accounts for the omission of US imperialism studies in the East Asian context. As the field of cultural studies of US imperialism is still emerging, it is precisely here that a critical internationalist stance has to be maintained to avoid the trap of a nationalism on nationalism in the studies of »the culture of imperialism«.

Historically, as a dominant cultural imaginary, »America« has never been outside »Asia«, just as »Asia« has not been outside »America« since the mid-19th Century. Japan was opened by the US state and capital in 1858 through the port treaty system. The impact of economic and political forces cannot be understated. In the context of Korea, in the early 1930’s, as Sun-young Yoo (2000) powerfully analyzes, the »embodiment of American modernity« performed a cultural-imaginary function against Japanese colonialism. The rise of the US as a global power after WWI was felt not only in East Asia but also in European empires and colonies. As a newcomer to imperialist power, the US's strategy of »self-determination« in moving into already partitioned territories proved effective in competition with the established imperial power, and in winning over the collaboration of colonized nationalist elites. Aime Cesaire documented this sentiment in the 1940's as follows,

[i]I know that some of you, disgusted with Europe, with all that hideous mess which you did not witness by choice, are turning - oh! in no great numbers - toward America and getting used to looking upon that country as a possible liberator.
»What a Godsend!« you think.
»The bulldozers! The massive investment of capital! The rods! The ports!”
»But American racism!«
»So what? European racism in the colonies has inured us to it!«
And there we are, ready to run the great Yankee risk.
So, once again, be careful! American domination - the only domination from which one never recovers. I mean from which one never recovers unscarred.[/i]³

Here, Cesaire did not give us a detailed argument to explain why American domination is the only form from which one can never recover; but Cesaire's formulation might well be to warn pro-American enthusiasts that a new form of imperialism without the older form of territorial colonization was emerging. Indeed, Japanese imperialism, defeated in WWII, was immediately replaced by US imperialism, something which has been carefully examined in Bruce Cumming's (1984) analysis. There was a direct handover from Japanese to US imperialism throughout the East Asia region. Ever since the Hiroshima/Nagasaki atomic bomb incident, the Japanese nation-state has been living under the permanent shadow of the US; the authoritarian regimes in South Korea and Taiwan have been hailed as loyal allies. Even the PRC (which was never directly under US influence) has seen the US as the negative Other, the representative of the West. In short, ever since the 1950's, »America« has become an »inside outsider« or an »outside insider,« against which slices of (national) identity and fragments of cultural subjectivity have been formed in these national spaces.

[b]Saying No[/b]

After a half-century-long »hegemony«, even without going through an inventory, one would only have to point to the current popularity of the »X Can Say No« phenomenon to see »the US complex.« Popular books have recently been published under the title: »Japan Can Say No,« »China Can Say No,« and even »Taiwan Can Say No.« Unmistakably, the US is the object unity of this No.⁴ To say »no« at this moment means that an indisputable »yes« has existed. Such denial only marks the deep identification with this irreplaceable figure called the US.

This is, then, what I take to be a central problematic that might serve as a linking point for different disconnected fields. This new undertaking has to depart from the earlier cultural imperialism thesis, which sees the new wave of imperialism no longer operating through territorial acquisition, but by imposing its cultural products and system of knowledge from the »outside« to »brainwash« the third-world subject. The most frequently cited example has been Hollywood. The problem with such a formulation is that it is not able to explain the inner logic of articulation, because the theory of false consciousness is no longer acceptable. From the mid-1980’s onward, the economy in the region has been strong enough to build various forms of cultural industries in competition with Hollywood, with the result that the American pop-cultural product is only one of the choices for young population, hence breaking the singularity of the former. This is not to deny that there was an earlier time when, for instance, the American Top 40 was central for the formation of East Asian pop-music production. But the fact is: by the 1990’s, the younger generation no longer sang American pop songs in Karaoke. The critical undertaking might therefore have to push seminal works such as Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism⁵ further to open up the problematic of how imperialism is able to generate long-term impacts, not so much through cultural apparatuses such as transnational media intervention, as through negotiation and articulation of politico-economic forces in local histories.⁶ The question then becomes: how, and through what processes and mechanisms, are capitalist and imperialist globalizing forces dialectically articulated in the local cultural formations? This question demands further research and analysis.

A temporary theoretical proposition might be useful here: the post-World War II history of neo-colonial/imperial identifications has set limits to the boundaries of the local cultural imaginary, consciously or unconsciously articulated by and through the leading institutions of the nation-state in alliance with the capital and even civil society sectors, which in turn has shaped our psychic-political geography. The US in the post-World War II era has become that center figure-object of identification. The material history of imperialism has in effect established a neo-colonial master as the object of identification, and later, of dis-identification, through which neo-colonial systems of representation and modes of living infiltrate the space of the national-popular cultural imaginary; the directions of the flow of psychic desire and energy operate under the rubric of and within the boundary of the colonial and neo-colonial cultural imaginary. This chain of movements traverses the social body. The effect of the »culture of US imperialism« has been precisely to insert itself into the geo-colonial space by constructing itself as the imaginary figure of modernity, and, hence, as the object of identification. Not only has American English become the first foreign language to be acquired; institutional forms have been strongly copied; the US gradually became the routinized, if not the only possible, space for advanced education until the late 1980’s; for both the state bureaucrat or the oppositional elites, the »American« experiences have become the referent points of their own legitimation. The trickle-down effects were unthinkably large, to the extent that things »foreign« in the popular imagination would largely mean »American.« A critic in mainland China charted out such a sentiment at a 1999 conference held in Beijing: Today’s America is our tomorrow. »America« has been the model to »catch up« with.

Of course, it would be out of date to directly apply Fanon's account in suggesting that »Japanese«, »Korean«, »Chinese« or »Taiwanese« want to be »American,« just as »The black man wants to be white.« This new condition, if understood as »post«-Cold War globalization, has pushed beyond the limited story of colonial identification, and is now articulated in the structure of global uncertainty, with the WTO as the compelling sign.

The complexity of the situation is the complexity of history, since historical traces never die out when they hit the new conditions, which will pick up elements from the past to justify the present, such as the anticommunist sentiment as a surface expression of global fear, as in the rhetorical trope of the Club. At the other end, an ascending form of nativism, »civilizationalism,« has been gradually emerging. Cho Hae-Joang has succinctly analyzed the Confucian Revival Movement in Korea; Chua Beng Huat has pinpointed the Singaporeans' redrafting of their identification as Asian; and »Japan« is obviously undergoing a re-Asianization phase.⁷ Of course, this »self-rediscovery« movement is connected to the regionalization of global capital, but its psychoanalytical drive is once again grounded in the reaction to colonial history. The pronounced or unpronounced Other, against which this Asian civilisationalist identity is defined, is the »West,« now represented by »America«. But once again, anti-Americanism is not just a return of the repressed in history, it is a response to the global uncertainty.

[b]Dis-Identification[/b]

Dis-identification is meaningless without the prior existence of identification; one has to identify with something first to be able to launch one's disassociation. The above analyses do not have the sarcastic motive of ridiculing any of the instances cited, but aim to point out that both modes (pro- or anti-American) operate within the same space defined by the same object. By now, I hope I have provided one possible answer to the »lack« of study of US imperialism: the US/the Object. The implication is perhaps this: We have to recognize that »America« has not only been with us, but has been inside our cultural subjectivity and has been part of us, if we wish to honestly understand the cultural composite of the self or selves; that the US has not merely defined our identities, but has become the referent point of our cultural imaginary. And it is precisely by occupying this position of being the »referent point« or system of reference that »America« constitutes our subjectivity, and precisely because it is an imaginary referent point, it has become part of us. What I am trying to argue is that, when something has become the dominant frame of reference, this something is already part of us; if the US, not the Philippines or Korea, has been cited constantly as a referent point to justify one’s claim for democracy in the popular arena in Taiwan, it means »we are American,« in the sense that we are not Korean or Filipino. This recognition and realization would be the necessary point for us to move somewhere. Unless the cultural imaginary of »America« can be deconstructed and brought to the forefront, unless the US as the object of identification and referent point can be re-directed and multiplied, we are doomed to the histories of colonialism taken over by the neo-colonial Cold War structure; unless the cultural imaginary we have been living with can be decolonized and de-Cold Wared, the vicious circle of colonization, decolonization and recolonization will continue. Such orientation is, then, neither bashing »America,« nor is it an attempt to revise the »Western« mode of thought by adding »Asian« elements, but to multiply sites of identification and to construct »alternative frames of reference,« as Tejaswini Niranjana (2000) puts it in more precise terms.⁸ In this sense, »Asia« and the »Third World« become a method, an alternative site and referent point for us to move towards.

Let me put the question in this extremely crude map:

|--------->Japan
The West |--------->Korea
America |---------->China
|---------->Taiwan

In the post-World War II era, the dominant structure of flow, exchange and influence has been from the US to these spaces. All these spaces have been directly linked with the US. Take intellectual productions as a concrete example. US academic texts have traveled and been actively read and taught in East Asian universities. Fashionable intellectual trends such as structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism happening here have been largely a reproduction of what has become fashionable in the US academic market. The reverse has never been the case. The crucial simple recognition is the fact that there have been no exchanges among these different places. Moreover, often, intellectuals from East Asia are able to meet each other, if they meet at all, only in the US academic context, and not too much »at home«. Therefore, an East Asian critical, intellectual circle as such does not exist. Because of the long-term formed structure of desire toward North America, there is no desire to meet each other. When meetings actually do take place, »we« look down on each other, for some of us have not yet properly understood Derrida’s »difference«; or »we« compete over who has read the most recent queer theory books produced in the US. This is the subject of conversation. There is no desire to read each other’s work, or to find out the key issues being debated in various local intellectual scenes. Even worse, there is no circulation system within East Asian bookstores which one could use to find the books published directly in Asia, if one wished to read them. Language differences are often the excuse. But if one can read »English« texts published in the US, why does one not read books published in Manila, Singapore or Calcutta? This, then, is what I meant when I said that the referent point and site of identification and desire need to be shifted and multiplied; otherwise we shall constantly be reproducing the dominant structure of knowledge and desire.

Right before the 1996 presidential election, a goodly number of e-mail messages came to us from friends who, living outside Taiwan, were concerned about the missile crisis. These friends seemed to be more nervous then we were. Once you were there in the middle of the crisis, there did not seem to be much that you could do. Life had to go on. This sense of powerlessness or indifference was then interpreted as the maturity of people in Taiwan in handling the crisis situation, despite the fact that some middle-class people took out all their savings to exchange them for US dollars, so that the City Bank in Taipei had to ship in cash to meet the exceedingly anxious demand. In instances such as the risk of war, one could perhaps better understand that in Taiwan there is no positionality to even utter the term »US imperialism.« It is precisely here that we meet Seong Nae Kim's analysis of Korean post-war modernity, where the foundational narrative has been anti-communism: the utterance of US imperialism will be immediately translated as an identification with the communist regime across the strait. The regulated binarism leaves no space to insert critical formulation. The hidden »parental guidance« built in the past 50 years thus resembles, once again, a widely circulated claim: »If Taiwan were still under the Japanese, we would probably be better off.« At the risk of arousing the anger of my friends in Taiwan, I will say once again that »Japan« and »America« have been inside our cultural subjectivity. What could be the critical effect of such recognition? A celebration of imposed hybridity? A retreat into nativist purity? I take such a recognition as part of decolonization in motion, a point at which reactive anxiety can be turned into active forces. Let’s not »de-americanize« ourselves, but at least try to move towards »Asia« and the »Third World« to reconstitute ourselves.

 

 

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