Towards a Poststructuralist Southeast Asian Studies?

Journal article by Rommel A. Curaming; SOJOURN: Journal of Social
Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol. 21, 2006

Towards a Poststructuralist Southeast Asian Studies?

by Rommel A. Curaming

Observers had it that the heyday of conventional area studies, in
general, and Southeast Asian studies, in particular, has long faded in
the horizon (Anderson 1984, 1992; McVey 1998). The initial outburst of
optimism and excitement has been replaced by a sense of uncertainty
and foreboding characteristic of a field under threat. Despite renewed
interest as of late in Asian Studies brought about by the growing
"Asianization" of some American universities, (1) and because of the
post-September 11 atmosphere, (2) perpetual insecurity rather than
sustainable growth seems to be what holds for the future. While such
pessimistic estimation captures more adequately the state of Southeast
Asian Studies in North America, something not diametrically different
may also be said of that in Australia (3) and in Europe. (4)
Apparently, it is only in Singapore and in Japan where area studies,
especially the Southeast Asian branch, are on the rise. (5)

The reasons for the above-cited condition are many. These include the
shift in the thrusts of funding agencies, (6) a move that was related
to area studies' close association with the Cold War era and
modernization project, both of which have seen their days. Of equal,
if not more, importance is the nature of conventional area studies
itself that makes it seemingly incongruous with the changing
configuration of a globalizing world. (7) By nature of conventional
area studies, I take it to mean the often narrow concerns for a
specific area, usually a nation-state, coupled with the
empiricist/positivi st approach adopted that left unarticulated the
assumptions and theoretical underpinnings. (8) This echoes the
two-decade old observation by Anderson that "the bulk of North
American scholarship on Southeast Asian politics is ... decidedly
untheoretical. ... uncomparative and thus, from a disciplinary point of
view, unsophisticated" (Anderson 1984, p. 42). Seen from the
Australian perspective, Sundhaussen blatantly calls a similar
phenomenon as a manifestation of parochialism. (Sundhaussen 1986). He
was referring specifically to the study of Indonesian politics and
history, but his critique may well cover other countries, and perhaps
other fields of study that deal with the region. According to Ruth
McVey, one almost fatal consequence of this is, specifically referring
to the case of the United States, that once area studies ceased to be
the "darling of the grant-makers" , it has been easy for those in the
discipline to "ghettoize" and marginalize it (McVey 1998, p. 44).
While some observers claim that Australia's engagement with Asia is
different owing among other things to its proximity to the region and
that this would ensure resilience of Asian Studies in Australia, the
downsizing if not closing down of Asian Studies in most universities
tends to fuel a sense of "crisis" that haunts the field. (9) Against
such a backdrop we can easily understand the various calls from
different directions (10) either for the rejection or re-invention of
the concept of "area studies" that traditionally underpins Southeast
Asian Studies (or Asian Studies in general). As Kenneth Prewitt
emphasizes, the area studies we have known for so long is "not the
optimum structure for providing new insights and theories suitable for
the world in which the geographic units of analysis are neither static
nor straightforward" (cited in Reynolds 1998, p. 13).

The Proposal

One fairly recent and thought-provoking proposal to re-invent area
studies has been bravely put forward by Peter Jackson in two articles
published in the journal SOJOURN (April 2003). The tides of the two
articles are revealing: "Space, Theory, and Hegemony: The Dual Crises
of Asian Area Studies and Cultural Studies" and "Mapping
Poststructuralism' s Borders: The Case for Poststructuralist Area
Studies". The primary purposes of these interesting articles are to
foreground the problems immanent in area studies and cultural studies
and to make a case for reconfiguration and integration of the two. He
argues for a "poststructuralist area studies" whereby certain elements
of conventional area studies would be reconfigured and creatively
combined with poststructuralist cultural studies. In my own
estimation, these articles are important for three reasons. First,
they demonstrate a concrete and serious effort towards a synthesis of
elements of conventional Southeast Asian Studies and poststructuralism
that underpins Cultural Studies. Second, they offer what seems to me
an ironic, though in some ways compelling, critique of
poststructuralism as applied in globalization and cultural studies.
Finally and most importantly for the purpose of this article, they
exemplify a number of seemingly intractable difficulties which, as I
will elaborate later, seem to be attendant in any effort to combine
elements of two projects that are contradictory in some fundamental ways.

Initially, Jackson attempts to rescue the two vital elements of his
project: area studies from the much-maligned pangs of essentialism and
parochialism and poststructuralism/ cultural studies from their unholy
alliance with globalization theories. The first task is easily
accomplished as he merely inserts his position within the echoes of
similar sentiments as those expressed by Reynolds (1995, 1998),
Morris-Suzuki (2000), McVey (1998), and Hong (1996), among others. The
second proves to be quite a challenge and while I think he acquits
himself rather well in some aspects, he founders in others. He has
rightly shown, for one, that poststucturalism' s key concept of
difference and the related ideas of border-crossing, rupturing of
binaries, indeterminacy of meaning and mutual contamination of
identities have been misappropriated by practitioners of cultural and
globalization studies to argue for a supposed realization of a
borderless world where capital, ideas, cultural influence, and even
human beings freely flow (Jackson 2003a). For another, he argues that
despite the undeniable onslaught of globalizing forces, the world is
not really converging towards a homogenized entity where difference is
erased. Thus he calls for a theorizing that eschews any presumption of
universal applicability. It is on the strength of this assertion that
he pushed for a reconfigured poststructuralism- -one that is supposed
to be stripped of universal pretensions and sensitive not just to the
difference within a cultural or discursive system but also to the
spatially or geographically nurtured difference between distinct
systems (Jackson 2003b). He chides Foucault and Derrida's
poststructuralism for being blind to geography, a move that, as I will
show later, betrays sign of yet another urge to misappropriate
poststructuralism. He believes that such blindness makes its
application (without modification) rather dubious to areas outside of
the West where it originated. He further claims that it makes
poststructuralism an unwitting partner of what he considers as the
conservative politics that underpin the push for globalization and the
more to affirm the Western world's intellectual hegemony. On top of
that, he argues, and I agree, that if scholars would hope to make any
headway in combating the intellectual hegemony of the West, an
effective battle plan should include emphasis on a spatially grounded
type of intellectual project This seems to be the foundation of his
crusade to "save" area studies.

His idea of "saving" area studies is, he hints, not a straightforward
matter of merely deducting something from the classical area studies
and graft what is left with poststructuralist cultural studies. It
instead involves a substantial overhaul of the concept of the "area"
so as to make it multi-dimensional and in the process free it from the
tyranny of the old preoccupation with the nation-state as the only
legitimate locus and focus of analysis. He argues for a
"multidimensional domain of geographical, virtual and other forms of
locality and boundedness" (11) (Jackson 2003b, p. 76). It is not
difficult to appreciate the usefulness and the good intention behind
such a move. One can easily agree that the push for hegemony of
globalization narratives can be neutralized by reference to the
boundedness of the local. However, what struck me was Jackson's flawed
justification for upholding boundary and space as the basis for his
"poststucturalist area studies".

Flawed Justification

Jackson strongly asserts that central in poststructuralism is the idea
of boundary or borders. He correctly notes that inherent in Foucault's
notion of discourses is the idea of boundary beyond which "something
different happens" (Stoler 1996, p. 208, from Foucault 1977, pp.
67-68, cited in Jackson 2003b, p. 51). That is, a discursive realm is
like a self-contained box outside of which different rules (governing
utterances, for instance) apply. I am less sure, however, about his
interpretation of Derrida as Derrida offers a range of possibilities
depending on one's purpose and proclivities. One, for example, can
invoke Derrida's concept of differance (perpetual deferment) to
support a highly relativistic even nihilistic position. Jackson, like
many other scholars, understandably ignores this part of Derrida (12)
and instead emphasizes what Robertson and Khonder (1998) (cited in
Jackson 2003a) call as "conflexification" or blurring of borders in
Derrida's thought, which I should note emanates from the other meaning
of difference (that is, identity can be established only in reference
to its "other", so in effect there is really no pure identity).
Jackson seems so confident in his assertion that he made it a
cornerstone for his proposal to "save" area studies. However, the
problem is not so much that Jackson may have overstretched his
confidence in asserting the supposedly inherent link between borders
and poststructuralism (although that may indeed be a problem). It is
rather in his failure to realize that the notion of borders in
Foucault's and Derrida's thought may not be ontologically transposable
with the border on a geographic space. Foucault and Derrida were
interested in borders within or between discourses that make use of
the representational and analytic power of language and "Western"
logic. Jackson's border, on the other hand, marks the boundary of
geographic or virtual spaces. His conflation or transposition of the
two is thus questionable. While it is agreeable that certain forms of
area studies deserve to be upheld, I submit that better justification
must be sought from quarters other than the supposed centrality of
"border" in poststructuralist thoughts.

More serious difficulties haunt Jackson in what seems to me a
misguided attempt to recast poststructuralism. His bitter complaint
about Foucault's and Derrida's blindness to geography while factually
justifiable utterly misses the purpose for which poststructuralism was
formulated. To reiterate, Derrida and, to a lesser degree, Foucault
are more interested in the problems inherent in what purport to be
representations of reality, not in reality itself. Derrida has pointed
to the problems or limitations of the tools--language, binary
logic--that we employ in our attempt to analyse and represent reality.
He seems not as interested in what's happening "on the ground". This
puts poststructuralism, and this point is often missed, in a league
substantially though, as I will note below, not totally different
from, say, structuralism, functionalism, Marxism, and other theories/
methods employed in "more traditional" scholarship. While the latter
purport to capture, analyse, and theorize "reality on the ground" and
hence need not only geography but also realist or foundational
epistemology, poststructuralism aims to problematize and critique
precisely the outputs (knowledge) of those attempts to represent and
explain "reality'. In other words, it is a critique of knowledge, not
a tool for "knowing". It does that by resting on a non-foundational
(deconstructive) epistemology and it assumes a position of a
metacritique, on a level different and "higher" from "traditional"
scholarship. It should not surprise therefore that geographic space is
not one of Foucault's and Derrida's main concerns. This foregrounds
Jackson's rather vacuous case for recasting poststructuralism to
incorporate spatiality-- a move that according to Jackson is necessary
to make poststructuralism more "applicable" to the areas outside of
its Western origin. As he claims, poststructuralism proved to be not
uniformly "applicable" to all cases in all areas (specifically Asia of
Thailand, as Jackson's often cited example), just like many other
theories that originated in the Euro-American world. He seems to
forget that Derrida was categorical in his critique of the "Western"
mode of thinking or knowing, specifically the language and the logic
that underpin it. Any product therefore of any scholarly endeavour
which by design operates within such a mode is potentially at the
receiving end of Derrida's critique. To emphasize, it does not matter
that scholars are talking about a non-Western country or that they are
Asians themselves who use the native language in their scholarly
discourse. The very fact that they employ logic and analytic methods
that are unmistakably Western makes them an object of Derrida's wrath.
As a critique of knowledge/scholarsh ip of any attempt to represent
"reality", therefore, poststructuralism is applicable all throughout
the universe where "our" brand of scholarship is practised regardless
of whether such scholarship is done in or about the West or the
non-West. (13) Possibly, a poststructuralist critique may cease to be
applicable only in areas, or level of existence, where our kind of
logic is not considered as "the logic" such as perhaps in Harry
Potter's magical world or in the spiritual world of the yogis, Sufis,
or Zen Buddhists. The boundaries that must be emphasized therefore
should not be between the geographic West and the rest but between the
world where Western logic and scholarship operates, on the one hand,
and that which it does not, on the other. In short, the great divide
is more epistemological than geographical, making Jackson's case for
reconfiguring poststructuralism to make it geography-friendly almost
pointless. It cannot but reveal both his misunderstanding of certain
aspects of poststructuralism and, at the same time, his urge to
appropriate poststructuralism for a job which it is not meant to do.

Application and Contradictions

What Jackson exactly means by "application" is not very clear based on
the two articles cited above. One due, however, is his transposition
of the idea of border in poststructuralism thought with geographic
space which I have shown to be untenable. His more recent articles may
offer some more clues. In "Tapestry of Language and Theory" (Jackson
2004), he observes that poststructuralism, along with other critical
theories, have now replaced Marxism as a vehicle of radical critique
in Thai Studies. He notes further that just like Marxism and other
Western theories that have to be acculturated into a non-Western soil,
poststructuralism must also be "transculturated" to make it more
"applicable" to Thai Studies. This is telling. As far as Jackson is
concerned, Marxism and poststructuralism share more or less the same
epistemological properties that make one replaceable by another. I
should reiterate that this is not the case. As already noted, from a
epistemological standpoint they occupy not only different but also
disjointed platforms. As theories, they are ontologically distinct.
Marxism rests on a realist or foundational epistemology whereas
poststructuralism is exactly the opposite, its epistemology is
non-foundational. Whereas Marxism and other conventional theories are
employed to construct knowledge that is supposed to correspond to
reality, poststructuralism aims to deconstruct such knowledge and thus
explode the "myth" that enable individuals or groups to establish
knowledge's supposed correspondence to reality. The two are thus
essentially contradictory. One reason postcolonial theory is fraught
with contradictions is precisely because of attempts of its proponents
to combine elements of poststructuralism and other theories such as
Marxism. Said, for instance, in order to pin down the discourse he
named Orientalism cannot but be guilty of the same mistake,
inadvertently falling into its conceptual opposite, Occidentalism.
Spivak, on her part, notwithstanding her tirade against essentialism
had to settle ignominiously to "strategic essentialism" , sidelining
all its dire theoretical implications. As I will further try to
demonstrate below, Jackson falls into similar pit of contradictions
and unfortunately he seems oblivious to it.

In his article, "Semicoloniality, Translation and Excess in Thai
Cultural Studies" (Jackson 2005), some more dues about what he meant
by "application" are revealed. In this article, he aims to develop
further his earlier proposal for a poststructuralist area studies by
spelling out in some details what can be done to realize such a
project. The two main pillars of this proposal are (1) Thailand's
supposed status of being "semicolonial" , and (2) the rigorous practice
of translation. He claims that Thailand's "semicoloniality" --that is,
while not being colonized was nonetheless affected by Western
colonialism- -puts it in a strategic position to offer insights or
counter-factuals, what he calls "excess", that can help refine
poststructuralist theorizing. He believes that Thailand has a
"distinctive history of culture/power relations", thus requiring
poststructural theorizing that is sensitive to such distinctiveness.
He expresses valid concerns that without "transculturated" theorizing,
the object of study, the Thais, would be at the supplicating end of
the hegemony of Western theories. How such theorizing can be
accomplished, translation holds pivotal function.

By translation, he does not just mean from one language to another
(from Thai to English or vice versa, for instance) but also
translation between discourses, and ultimately between theories. The
centrality of translation in his project he declares thus:
"Poststructuralist Asian cultural studies can only realise its
critical objectives by incorporating and paying careful attention to
the technical skills of translation that were the hallmarks of area
studies" (Jackson 2005, p. 24). No wonder he sets forth rigorous
procedures or requirements (14) for what he dubs as poststructuralist
translation. Personally, I find the idea of poststructuralist
translation exceedingly strange. For one, as he does not cite the
source of these rules, it makes me wonder whether he himself has
formulated them. If he himself did so, I wonder if he can satisfy
those requirements and at the same time call himself
"poststructuralist" . Meaning, to the extent that he succeeds in
reaching very high level of accuracy by following those rules, and be
certain that indeed such high level of accuracy is attained, there is
corresponding negation of one of the main tenets of poststructuralism,
that is, indeterminacy. For another, if we follow poststructuralism
strictly, there is no such thing as translation, only transformation
primarily because a different set of power underpins the source and
the target languages. Still another, the very idea of translation
presupposes two "essentially" different, but at same time
"essentially" parallel entities. One can grasp these entities only by
upholding their essential meanings. The question is, whatever happens
to injunction against essentialism? Would he also take refuge in
"strategic essentialism" , as Spivak did? Jackson may rebuke me for
taking too strictly the meaning of essentialism. But as I will further
discuss below, it is in the fundamentally essentialist nature of our
language (or perhaps any written language) alongside with the logic
that is operative within it, that lies the primal roots of the
poststructuralist anti-essentialist stance. The reason why
poststructuralism heralds the "linguistic turn" that horrifies most
quarters in the academy while overly excite others is precisely
because it grounds the problem of representation in the tool--the
language. Whereas before, the problem was attributed to the
limitations inherent in the knower, encapsulated in the concept of
"perspective' , and thus can be remedied by better methods or by proper
attitude, poststructuralism reminds us that the roots go more deeply.
The well-spring of problems is the tool itself.

Unfortunately, the full import of this seems to have escaped Jackson.
Despite his awareness that "no one interpretation, and hence no one
translation provides the definitive meaning of the text" (Jackson
2005, p. 22), he brews with confidence in castigating Morris (2000,
among others) for inaccuracies of translation (Jackson 2004). While he
often cites that all knowledge are manifestations of power relations,
yet it did not seem to cross his mind that by following such an axiom
his virulent critiques of Morris's "faulty" translations would appear
no more than an assertion of his power over that of Morris's and not
that he can or does indeed translate more accurately. How can he then
intrepidly suggest that through his brand of poststructuralist
translation, he would be able to understand Thailand better and it
would put him in better position than Morris to offer what he calls "a
more radical poststructuralist project", whatever that means? (Jackson
2005, p. 39). One cannot help but wonder, if Jackson is indeed
"applying" poststructuralism, at the core of which is incredulity
towards all certainties, how can he seem to be so certain about so
many things, not the least of which is his faith in poststructuralism?

In the same article, he expresses regret that "(s)ome
poststructuralist approaches to translation have sometimes
concentrated more on deconstructing the power relations implicit in
forms of knowledge than on the rules that govern the production of
meaningful utterances" (emphasis mine) (Jackson 2005, p. 24). This is
rather an ambiguous statement. One interpretation is that he is
unhappy that some poststructuralist scholars focus more on
deconstructing power relations than on deconstructing "rules that
govern the production of meaningful utterances". If this is the case,
it does not make sense because deconstructing power relations that
underpin knowledge forms necessarily requires deconstructing the rules
governing meaning formation that enable such knowledge to be
considered as acceptable knowledge. The other possible interpretation
of the statement is that he wishes that more attention be focused on
the rules that define meaningful utterances rather than on
deconstructing power relations. If this is the case, it is perhaps one
of the most telling indications of his misunderstanding of
epistemological limits of poststructuralism and of the purpose for
which it is meant to be utilized.

Poststructuralism, to restate, is for all intents and purposes meant
to deconstruct knowledge claims and this includes poststructuralism
itself. Now, when Jackson expresses his wish that more focus should
have been on the "rules" that define "meaningful utterances", he did
not seem to realize that one would have to operate beyond
poststructuralism to do that. For how can poststructuralism identify
"meaningful utterances" when from its heart Springs scepticism about
meanings? Jackson rejects this absolute scepticism towards meaning by
citing Rappaport who, according to Jackson, claims that those who
interpret Derrida's differance as a "retreat from meaning" to
indeterminacy are mistaken. Derrida's aim, so Jackson paraphrases
Rappaport, is "to make clear the local contexts of meaning ... "
(Rappaport 2001, p. 73, as cited in Jackson 2003b). This emboldens
Jackson to insist (despite awareness that "(t)he rules of language,
and the meanings they produce are shifting") that "in any given
context there is usually sufficient consensus about the rules of
linguistic and discursive production to guarantee that quite specific
consequences follow" from infractions of the rules (emphasis mine)
(Jackson 2005, p. 23). Rappaport and Jackson are seemingly unaware
that the formation of consensus on rules and the "local context of
meaning" are precisely among the sites of power that poststructuralism
wants to deconstruct. Poststructuralism likewise aims to unsettle the
predictive attributes of knowledge that "guarantees" (in Jackson's
word) something, primarily because that is precisely where power and
knowledge meet and cause problems. That one can in actual practice
seems to do a translation or a prediction indicates that he already
operates beyond the confines of poststructuralism, perhaps within the
parameters of structuralism or some forms of empiricisms or hermeneutics.

Reasons for Contradictions

Jackson is oblivious to these lapses or contradictions maybe because
of the following reasons: First, he seems to be acutely unaware of the
oxymoronic relationship between poststructuralism and scholarship in
general. I will even hazard a proposition that the idea of
"poststructuralist area studies" is an oxymoron par excellence. This
is due to the characteristic features of what we call scholarship.
When we do scholarship, clarity of thoughts or expression is one of
the imperatives. Otherwise, we would not be understood. We try as much
as possible to define words and concepts in an unambiguous manner, and
we try to establish (or impose) conceptual order based on what we
consider as logical templates. The outcome is what we call
"knowledge", which conventional scholarship regards for so long as an
approximation of reality. Then here came poststructuralism. Foucault,
for instance, reminds us that what we call "knowledge" is no more than
a product of a constellation of powers that "freeze" what Derrida
considered as ever-fleeting and floating signifiers of reality. The
problem is that proponents of poststructuralism such as Derrida do not
or cannot use language and logic other than those used by other
scholars. They thus have to insert poststructuralism within the
scholarly community built upon conventions- -logic, language,
methods--that are precisely the object of its criticisms. Its
proponents despite their aspersions against essentialism and binaries
cannot but use a language that is by its very nature essentialist and
a logic that cannot operate except by referring to or presupposing its
opposite (binary logic). In other words, the primeval roots of the
scourge of essentialism lies in the very nature of language and the
binary logic we use. The answer then to the question "Can a
poststructuralist criticism, as honest as it can be, be framed without
such criticism going back to itself?." appears to be negative,
strictly speaking. For instance, as Said criticized the essentializing
moves of Orientalist scholars, he was at the same time essentializing
and reifying the otherwise multivalent "West" as well as the highly
differentiated processes and impacts of colonial projects. One may say
that Said is more a postcolonial rather than a poststructuralist
scholar but it was from the arsenal of poststructuralism that he drew
theoretical support. In the case of Jackson, claiming Thailand's
"semicoloniality" as the locus of potentially rich empirical data that
would allow Thai Studies to "speak to" and eventually refine
poststructuralist theorizing carries an underlying assumption that
Thailand is "essentially" different. His thorough emphasis on rigorous
translation which he believes would help extract "empirical excess" is
underpinned by the same assumption. The case is even more difficult
for Jackson because he is talking about "area studies", which I think
no matter how one reconfigures it, its rationale for existence remains
predicated on the "essential" distinctiveness of an area. Otherwise
those in the disciplines would be justified in eliminating or
absorbing area studies. They would claim that if such and such area is
not so different after all, then conventional disciplinary approach
would equally apply.

What puzzles is that Jackson celebrates such difference as though the
idea is compatible with Derridean concept of difference or as an
affirmation of what Foucault calls something beyond which "different
things happen". This cannot be the case because the concept of
difference is--very ironic indeed--a theoretical hindrance to
identifying or representing a truly empirically grounded difference.
This is a tricky philosophical question, but let me try to explain.
The concept of difference posits that one cannot really establish an
identity (of anything) because it always contains the seed of its
"other", which makes identity a non-identity (because it is shared
with its "other"). Defining, for instance, A necessarily requires
implicit reference to its opposite, say, non-A. This is how our binary
logic works. One thus cannot establish that A is different from non-A
precisely because the identity of A is shared with non-A. So A cannot
be different. Derrida's difference is theoretically posited; it is not
an empirical reality. It exists synthetically on a theoretical plane
as a conceptual device to map out the supposed nature of
representation. One may ask, how come we can perceive identities,
meanings, and differences around us? If we go by the concept of
difference, the appearance of identities and difference and meanings
are just that, appearance. It is not naturally there. It is imposed by
the perceiver, abetted by the calculus of power in a given social
context. Lest we forget, poststructuralism posits that in the natural
scheme of things, what we have are floating signifiers. So when
Jackson identifies Thailand's "semicoloniality" as a fountainhead of
distinctiveness, he was able to do so because of the network of
powers, including his own, that underpin such a view. The Derridean
concept of difference certainly has nothing to do with that. What the
concept does is precisely to expose Jackson's tacit claim to the contrary.

Second, Jackson may have been misled by the proliferation as of late
of a "poststructuralism industry" in the social sciences into thinking
that it may indeed be "applicable" . As I observe, the applications of
poststructuralism in various branches of social sciences and the
humanities appear to constitute a piecemeal borrowing of certain
concepts, such as anti-essentialism, anti-reification, anti-binaries,
and knowledge/power. The first three directly emanate from Derridean
concept of difference whereas the last is obviously
Foucauldian/ Nitzchean. The problem is that in Derridean formulation it
seems that the concept of difference is inherently linked to the other
meaning of difference (differance) . This is a part of
poststructuralism that is often ignored for its nihilistic or
anti-scholarship implications. The question is, can one "apply" the
first meaning of difference to the total exclusion of the other
meaning? Within the ambit of poststructuralism, I am afraid not.
Built-in in the anti-essentialist ideas (the first meaning) of
poststructuralism is its logical and necessary connection with the
second meaning of the concept of difference (constant deferment). This
is simply because the absence of an "essence" precisely leaves any
representation no choice but to build on yet another representation.
Reality, as poststructuralism emphasizes, can be accessed only through
mediation; it cannot be directly accessed or represented. I suspect
that once one applies the concept of difference without the other
meaning, one exits the domain of poststructuralism to that of
structuralism, in which case, it loses the critical edge inherent in
poststructuralism.

I should add that Foucault's ideas of knowledge/power and discourse
are also inherently linked to Derrida's anti-essentialist stance. To
reiterate, what gives knowledge an appearance of "truthfulness" is no
more than a set of power relations; it is not that they contain
essential truths. This does not mean, however, that knowledge is
always false or that it cannot capture reality. It only means that no
one can be certain that it is true, except oneself through whose
subjectivity one can invoke personal power to ascribe to it appearance
of certainty. The appearance of certainty, already noted, is something
imposed, say by an author or by a community of scholars or by
collective societal acclamation of, say, scientific methods. In the
final analysis knowledge is a manifestation of power relations.
Whether such assertions of power would be validated depends on another
set of powers. The fact that there are many "untruths" that for long
have paraded as true attests to this. The question thus of whether a
knowledge-claim is true or false should take a backseat to the
question: "Whose or which assemblage of power determine which
knowledge is true and which is false?"

It may well serve a poststructuralist analyst therefore to desist from
acting so smugly about the accuracy of one's critique. At best, an
analyst is merely asserting his power over that of other analysts and
that one is participating in yet another discourse when one offers its
analysis. He should always remind himself, as I do remind myself now,
that beyond certain boundary "different things happen". That I am able
to offer critique to Jackson's ideas is a testament to my personal
power to assert my views. I should not, in all honesty, assume that my
views are right. Whether my views or his are right will be decided by
individual scholars who themselves are inserted in the interstices of
power relations in the academy where we both exist. The configuration
of the constellation of such power in the academy is yet another
product of indeterminate combinations of factors in the society at
large. And even more complex it goes, and more insignificant me and my
views become, as one extends to the world stage and beyond. Humbling,
is it not? I figure that if there is one most "essential" lesson one
should learn from poststructuralism, it is intellectual humility.

Thirdly, by focusing only on certain aspects of poststructuralism at
the expense of others (differance, indeterminacy, anti-essentialism,
anti-binary) he denies himself a chance to be self-reflexive about his
own location as a scholar and as a proponent of poststructuralism
within the ambit of power relations in the academy and the society at
large. His pretence to innocence or detachment is almost palpable,
making the whole exercise very ironic indeed, considering that he
calls himself a poststructuralist. I should add that one way to
mitigate the self-refuting tendencies of a poststructuralist analysis
is for the author to satisfy the requirement of self-reflexivity. That
is, not only that one should be aware of one's predilections,
positions in the scheme of things, aims or interests, but also that
one should make them explicit and factor them in the analysis and
conclusion. This will not totally eliminate elements of contradiction
which as I have noted earlier is rooted in language and logic.
However, being transparent can spare one from the embarrassment of
unwittingly doing the same mistake committed by those whom one
criticizes. I for one know that much of my critique of Jackson is
predicated on my belief on the correctness of my interpretation of
poststructuralism which ironically, if correct, effectively casts
doubt on the accuracy of my interpretation. Such paradox is a curse of
poststructuralism being imbedded in scholarly practice. My advantage
over Jackson is that I do not claim to be a poststructuralist. But
that should not be comforting enough.

Conclusion

"What to do then with poststructuralism? " There is, I think, a very
special place for poststructuralism in area studies as in all other
branches of human knowledge--natural sciences, social sciences, and
the humanities. As a critic of all forms of knowledge, it reminds all
scholars of the potential and actual damage they can unknowingly
inflict on nature and other human beings. It casts serious doubt on
the Enlightenment' s belief on the inherent goodness of "knowing" or
knowledge by exposing knowledge's inescapable and intimate link with
various forms of power. Every scholar therefore worthy of this label
should understand poststructuralism and "apply" it as the basis of
one's reflexive attitude towards one's own work.

As a foundation of scholarly practice, I believe that
poststructuralism can best function as a framework for deconstructing
all representations, and not as a basis of representation itself. In
other words, poststructuralism should act as an adjunct to, not an
integral part of, the area studies or any other branches of knowledge
for that matter. If scholars do insist on appropriating certain
concepts from poststructuralism, they should better be aware of the
self-refuting tendencies that would result from such a move. They
should explicitly satisfy the requirement of self-reflexivity.
Finally, I also suggest they refrain from proclaiming that theirs is a
"poststructuralist" approach, much less that they are
poststructuralist. Otherwise, they expose themselves to criticisms for
failing to fully observe the injunctions emanating from
poststructuralism- -injunctions that in the first place cannot be fully
observed by any scholar owing to the very nature of scholarship he/she
does.