ASIAN 4453 - [Text, Image, Sovereignty in Southeast Asia]

(crosslisted) RELST 4453
(GB) (LA-AS)

Fall. Next offered 2016-2017. 4 credits.

A. Fuhrmann.

Investigating a series of pivotal cases in Southeast Asian history and in the present, this course focuses on how literary and visual forms engage with and produce political discourses. The course uses the notion of sovereignty to describe the contingent workings of power, agency, and affect in the context of, for instance, Thai conceptions of kingship or the Cambodian genocide. Its particular interest is to examine how experiences of traumatic loss, religious tropes and conventions, and notions of haunting or temporal difference pose a challenge to concepts of secular, liberal governance and notions of personhood and individual agency. The materials analyzed are taken from cinema, literature, photography, and new media. We juxtapose these texts with readings from Southeast Asian literary studies, religious studies, political theory, film studies, affect theory, and cultural psychology. (LL)