【院生ゼミ】7月2日
【大学院】
This week first, we discuss cases of Kartini, Ho Chi Minh, and Sukarno, for whom Western education, especially the acquisition of Western language, affected their course of life substantially.
The role of ordinary people in the formation of a nation was also discussed. As Spivak's argument on the subaltern, who are deprived of the way to represent themselves, made it clear, this is very important but at the same time not easy to substantiate. It was suggested that sometimes novelist's (another creation of modern times) imagination might help understand the ordinary people's reaction to the change of time.
Finally, we discuss how we can negotiate with such influential concepts as nationalism, seemingly of western origin, which has played a crucial role in non-western nations. It is indicated that it might be more productive to see nationalism (and other concepts) as a part of a series of the transmission, sharing, and adaptation in a local context of concepts instead of focusing on its influence.
A quotation from Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities (p. 47) may be relevant here:
Next week, we will discuss Chapter 9 of Osborne's book, titled "The Second World War in Southeast Asia," where an important topic is the impact and aftermaths of the Japanese invasion.