Minjian East Asia Forum: feelings and imaginations
Kuan-hsing CHEN, Ching-Ya HU, and Chih-ming WANG
[excerpts]
The Minjian East Asia Forum: Roundtable on the Disputes over Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands and Dokto (Takeshima)—hereafter referred to as the Forum—held in Taipei on October 6, 2012, was organized by the trans-generation team effort of Qingya Hu (1983), Chih-ming Wang (1975), and Kuan-hsing Chen (1957). They also co-drafted the Forum’s statement: “Facing History, Resolving Disputes, Working towards Peace in East Asia,” which is currently being revised by friends across the region. Hu, since 2005, has participated in the movement against the forced relocation of the Lesheng institution—a leper institution from 1929—and concerned with social movements of various kinds; Wang studies the “Protect Diaoyu Islands (Baodiao)” movement of the 1970s; and Chen has been involved in the solidarity movements for Asian thought for more than two decades. These long-term engagements are the driving force behind the Forum. This article was first written at the request by Hori Yukiko, the chief-editor of Sekai, the Japanese intellectual magazine published by Iwanami, on October 10, 2012, to reflect on how the Forum came about. The situations in Taiwan and East Asia were rather chaotic then, so were our feelings when we initiated the Forum under pressure. We have yet to find the exact words for our feelings, but will try here to fumble for some initial reflections.
Authors’ biographies
Kuan-Hsing Chen teaches at the Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies in National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. His most recent publication is Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Duke University Press, 2010).
Chin-Ya Hu, born in 1983, now a PhD Student in Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu.
Chih-ming Wang is assistant research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. His researches include Asian American literature, transnational cultural studies, and institutional history and have appeared in such journals as American Quarterly, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, and Chinese America: History and Perspectives. His first book entitled Transpacific Articulations: Study Abroad and the Remaking of Asian America is forthcoming from University of Hawai‘i Press.