This seminar looks at political engagements of Southeast Asian diasporas as a lens to interrogate colonialism, postcolonial violence, power, contemporary politics, transnational processes, neoliberalism, as well as globalization. Southeast Asian diasporas have been shaped by diverse historical, cultural, and political economic contexts, flows, obstructions, and entanglements. And indeed the term "diaspora" itself should be carefully considered in non-essentialist and non-homogenizing ways. Nonetheless, various Southeast Asian diasporas share certain similarities. Beyond reductionist and essentialist portrayals of victimhood, this seminar looks instead at the formation of diasporas and delves into diasporic experiences and politics of survival, solidarity, and resistance as well as dwelling and world-making as individuals and communities carve lives amid the challenges and multiple and multi-directional attachments of living outside the "homeland" while remaining connected to it.
- Course owner: Rosa Cordillera Castillo