Learning Places

At the time of his death in 2009, Masao Miyoshi was Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego.Harry Harootunian is Professor of East Asian Studies at New York University.

• Acknowledgments Introduction: The “Afterlife” of Area Studies Ivory Tower in Escrow / Masao Miyoshi Ando Shoeki - “The Forgotten Thinker” in Japanese History / Tetsuo Najita Objectivism and the Eradication of Critique in Japanese History / Stefan Tanaka Theory, Area Studies, Cultural Studies: Issues of Pedagogy in Multiculturalism / Rey Chow Signs of Our Times: A Discussion of Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture / Benita Parry Postcoloniality’s Unconscious / Area Studies’ Desire / H. D. Harootunian Asian Exclusion Acts / Sylvia Yanagisako Areas, Disciplines, and Ethnicity / Richard H. Okada Can American Studies Be Area Studies? / Paul A. BovÉ Imagining “Asia-Pacific” Today: Forgetting Colonialism in the Magical Free Markets of the American Pacific / Rob Wilson Boundary Displacement: The State, the Foundations, and Area Studies during and after the Cold War / Bruce Cumings The Disappearance of Modern Japan: Japan and Social Science / Bernard S. Silberman Bad Karma in Asia / Moss Roberts From Politics to Culture: Modern Japanese Literary Studies in the Age of Cultural Studies / James A. Fujii Questions of Japanese Cinema: Disciplinary Boundaries and the Invention of the Scholarly Object / Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto Contributors Index

“Area studies is in crisis, seemingly rendered marginal and anachronistic in a globalizing world. Yet, paradoxically, knowledge of histories, geographies, cultures, ecologies, and geopolitical tensions has become crucial if the public is to understand the dangers as well as the promises of globalization. Miyoshi and Harootunian here assemble a talented group of scholars to probe deeply into this contradiction. They convincingly argue that area studies needs to be completely revamped if not dissolved into new knowledge structures within the academy if it is to fulfill its mission. This challenges all of us to rethink disciplinary allegiances and past ways of knowing in critical as well as constructive ways.”-David Harvey, author of Spaces of Hope and Spaces of Capital “Bringing together an unusually wide range of concerns, Learning Places offers a theoretical account of Asian area studies and a moral and political critique of past and recurrent practices of epistemic violence. The political urgency of this type of work makes this a timely collection. This important book opens up a series of debates that must be had between the new humanities, area studies, and the disciplines.”-Michael Dutton, editor of Streetlife China