Kuan-Hsing Chen

Civil society and min-jian: on political society and popular democracy

Arguing for the necessity of multiplying and shifting the existing reference points in the critical work of cultural studies, this paper attempts to demonstrate what can be gained from a different understanding of ‘Asia as method’. In dialogue with Partha Chatterjee’s recent formulation of a ‘political society’, the essay places ‘civil society’ side by side with the long-standing notion of ‘min-jian’, in order to rediscover planes of social formation, which have been excluded by critical analysis in the modernizing processes. By analysing how civil society has been imagined as min-jian society, it argues that ‘translation’ provides a means to conduct the re-investigation so that the shape and characteristics of a local society and modernity can begin to emerge.

Knowledge production in the era of neo-liberal globalization: reflections on the changing academic conditions in Taiwan

Abstract This essay is an intervention to interrupt the blind adoption of the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) by Taiwan’s academic regime to evaluate scholarly work. Situating the changing local conditions of knowledge production in the larger context of neo‐liberal globalization, we trace the trajectory of implementing the new evaluation system and then pinpoint the critical impacts on intellectual work in this wave of ‘internationalizing’ research and publication promoted by the state bureaucracy. We argue for an alternative vision of globalization that is locally grounded, multiculturally nurturing and democratically driven.

Takeuchi Yoshimi's 1960 'Asia as Method' lecture

Takeuchi Yoshimi was a leading thinker in Postwar Japan. The originality of his work has been rediscovered in the past decade. Based on the present authors Asia as Method—toward De-Imperialization (2010) as a point of dialogue, this essay rereads Takeuchis intuitive formulation of ‘Asia as Method’ in the 1960 and tries to pinpoint different characteristics of knowledge conditions between now and then. It discovers that the ‘Inter-Asia methodology’ imagined in Takeuchis time is still a viable proposition to be implemented today, if we hope to break away with the dominant mode of thought that has been trapped in the colonial structure of academic institutions.

MTV: The (Dis)Appearance of Postmodern Semiosis, or the Cultural Politics of Resistance

If ecstasy of communication, fascination, desire, schizophrenic corruption of temporality and spatiality, obscenity (of sexuality), collage, quotation, fragmentation and non-unity are the key terms to describe the dominant characteristics of MTV, then we have moved from the question of &dquo;what does it mean?&dquo; to that of &dquo;what does it do?&dquo;, from signification to its effectivity; from textual politics to the politics of body.

The Decolonization Effects

Growing out of the histories of world-wide decolonization movements, Cultural Studies has become a major force continuing that critical intellectual tradition both within and outside academic contexts. Having persistently questioned cultural relations of power in local social formations for the past forty years, Cultural Studies is now undergoing a critical phase of internationalization. Such a transformation is occurring very much in response to the changing dispositions and structure of global forces such as transnationalisation of capital, and the realignment of the nation-states into regional super-states in the so-called post Cold War Era, as well as the implementation of the interconnected high tech systems such as satellites and inter-nets which makes talking across borders more possible. To be sure, using the umbrella term &dquo;globalization&dquo; to frame the

Beyond truth and method: On misreading Gadamer's praxical Hermeneutics

This essay argues for the priority of a “praxical hermeneutics” over both an ontological and a methodological one. Focusing on and pushing further Gadamers notion of practice, it attempts to register a praxical dimension to the hermeneutic tradition within communication studies. By bringing together philosophical hermeneutics and other critical discourses, this essay attempts to offer some new possibilities or directions for the study of communication and mass communication.

Intellectual engagement under the conditions of the division system: an interview with Paik Nak-chung

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