Re-opening an Asia-Scar: engaging (troubled) emotions in knowing, knowledge production and scholarly endeavors

Abstract

In this article, I bring to the center of inquiry the role of emotion in scholarship, knowledge production, and scholarly endeavors. I discuss the ways in which emotion, in varied forms and intensities, shapes how one may respond to particular bodies of knowledge and academic initiatives. In a complex manner, I engage with Kuan-Hsing Chen’s “Asia as Method” (Chen in Asia as Method: towards deimperialization, Duke University Press, Durham, 2010). I take it as an inspiration as well as a source of critique and expansion of ideas to advance scholarly arguments and to shed light on the process through which certain knowledge can be produced and/or restricted by particular emotions. At the same time, I critique varied uncritical endorsements of Asia, Asia as Method, and of ungrounded accusations of Western theory and hegemony. I lean into emotion/affect as a possible means of complicated knowing, productive scholarly writing, and knowledge production. I also emphasize the importance of engaging (with) rigorous and diverse historical knowledge as scholars produce education research. An important part of this article is what I refer to as an Asia scar incident and my reopening of that scar. To put this scar conversation in perspective, via narrative research, I present my recollection of the context leading to the scar as well as my reflection on the incident and how my scholarship has come along. I also request that scholars be open to multiple voices and multiple forms of scholarly participation to enable a more democratic recognition of nuanced knowledge production in transnationalized higher education. I argue that realizing and embracing such a democratic recognition can nurture and enable what I would call justice of voice and justice of participation.