"Working in the Traces of Area Studies" Panel Four:

Hierarchies of Knowledge Transmission and the Developmentalist Paradigm

Thursday, May 4 at 8:00 p.m.. and in Japan's timezone, Friday, May 5 at 9:00 a.m.

The crisis of area studies obliges us to call into question the historical conditions by which the active subject and the passive object of knowledge production were initially outlined within the structure of American Settler Colonialism, and further accommodated in the discourse of the West and the Rest. In this respect, we acknowledge the close affiliation between two disciplinary formations, American studies on the one hand and area studies on the other. In this regard, the scope of area studies has neither exceeded the limits of the United States settler colonialism nor the bipolarity of the West and the Rest. However, the bipolarity of the West and the Rest is neither stable nor effective today, and the underlying developmentalism, according to which the West is supposed to be developed/advanced in knowledge production and the Rest is underdeveloped/retarded and expected to learn from the West, is unsustainable. We must find ways to remove this old developmentalist paradigm that operates in both American studies and area studies.

Speakers:

Peter Button, New YorkJie-hyun Lim, SeoulWilliam Bridges, RochesterPedro Erber, TokyoFaculty emerita hosts: Brett deBary and Naoki Sakai

This is the final panel in the four panel series co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Department and the East Asia Program.