• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.57-85
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• 2018

The debates continue on the conceptualization of Southeast Asia and the ways in which those of us who are concerned to attempt scholarly interventions in the region define, conceive, understand and engage with it. But, in an important sense, the region has now been defined for us by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and whatever academic researchers might wish to impose on Southeast Asia in regard to their priorities and interests, it may make little difference. Given the politically-derived, nation-state definition of Southeast Asia, are all our problems of regional definition resolved? In some respects, they have been. ASEAN has constructed and institutionalized a regional organization and an associated regional culture. But in certain fields of research we still require academic flexibility. We cannot always be confined by an ASEAN-derived regional definition. The paper will explore other configurations of 'region' and its sub-divisions and propose, that in the spirit of academic freedom, we can continue to generate imaginative depictions of Southeast Asia and its constituents both within and beyond the region.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.517-538
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• 2009

This study explores the possibility of finding intersections of commonness and differences between Mahasweta Devi's short stories, "The Hunt" and "Douloti the Bountiful" and Angela Carter's "Flesh and the Mirror" and "Master" in Fireworks. At appearance, Carter as a writer of Great Britains and Devi as a writer of India in postcolonial period do not seem to share any commonness. This study, however, tried to find "common differences," to quote Chandra Mohanty's terminology, as a basis of solidarity possible between these two different feminist writers. Another concept appropriated in this process of comparing Carter and Devi is Gayatri Spivak's 'planetary comparative literature,' which contends the necessity of critical regional studies and the study of Asian Literature in the study of English literature. Devi and Carter, despite their historical, geopolitical and racial differences, share commonness in depicting Asian or colonized women not only as the oppressed others but also as the subjects who show potential for resistance and independence. Carter portrays Japanese women as the colonized and oppressed others of Japanese society, even though Japan did not have any colonial history. Devi finds in the postcolonial Indian women both the oppressed in the interstice of colonial/postcolonial/patriarchal Indian history and the potential for resistance. Despite some limitation in her understanding of Asia, Carter shows her insight to accept Asia as a true origin of her self-knowledge and performativity of her woman's role. Despite their differences, these two writers use Freud's 'unheimlich' from the feminist point of view, in general. Devi's depiction of the heroine's dead body at the end of the story implicates the possibility of resistance through women's 'uncanny' bodies. Carter converts Freudian and negative connotation of woman's body into positive and comfortable 'home' as a starting point of her self knowledge.