Chapter 4

Hello all,

Sorry I have been absent on the blog this week. I presented my work at a Mellon seminar two weeks ago, and beginning tomorrow there is a conference on Transnationalism (I am presenting tomorrow morning at 9:30 am if anyone cares to rise so early). I am presenting on the Korean poet Yi Sang and the colonial architecture journal Korea and Architecture. Anyway, once the weekend is over I want to make a few posts to the blog, particularly because we will be moving into our discussions of modernization theory, area studies, etc.

The Pheng Cheah book is quite ambitious and is full of good insights and connections. I don't necessarily agree with many of his claims, though I find myself moving toward them. In any case, this book can serve as an invaluable reference for those interested in questions of colonialism and the politics of culture in the process of de-colonization. Also, it sets the material we have read thus far in a more global and less provincially European context. We can see that problems of finitude / infinitude, life and death, transcendental philosophy and anthropology, Bildung as organic formation, etc. are better considered issues of modernity, and more specifically colonial modernity, rather than questions confined to Foucault or Berman's putative "West." But this should already be obvious...

I want to point out that I did not assign Chapter 4 only because the reading load was already quite substantial. Nonetheless, this is a vital chapter for anyone interested in connections between national liberation movements and Marxism. His presentation is somewhat brief, but nonetheless he touches the main points and it is definitely a good entryway into the "national question" in Marxism. It would be great if you get a chance to at least look over that chapter.