methodology of leaving america for asia: reading south korea’s social studies textbooks through chen kuan-hsing’s asia as method

This project began as a content analysis of five South Korean high school Social Studies textbooks. Yet, it has evolved into an epistemological experiment to pursue the question of “what does it mean to leave America for Asia, at least methodologically, for the researcher who left Asia for America?” Using the textbooks as a mediating site, therefore, I articulate a process that engages with, moves toward, and develops deimperializing methodology. More specifically, I interweave Kuan-Hsing Chen’s Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (2010) with my data by analyzing the data through Asia as Method and reading and practicing Asia as Method as methodology. This allows me to move away from fixating on the West as a reference point even through my critique. Rather, I work to produce geo-historically grounded knowledge for specific interventions at this mediating site toward the movements of decolonization, de-cold war, and deimperialization. In the process, I discuss how Asia as Method as methodology provokes political, psychological, and social engagements of everyday, multiplies reference points for knowledge production, and requires a researcher to re-work on one’s subjectivity inevitably constituted by imperialism.