Asia in Loops; or, How to Stop Worrying about Method

講題：Asia in Loops; or, How to Stop Worrying about Method

主講人：馬卲齡（康乃爾大學亞洲研究學系副教授）

主持人：王智明（中央研究院歐美研究所副研究員）

主辦單位：中央研究院民族學研究所「世界化中國研究群」

時間：2023年7月21日（五）15:00-17:00

地點：中研院民族所第一會議室（本場次為實體演講）

報名網址：https://forms.gle/qgv6AvhXW6XB5J63A

報名截止日期：7月17日（一）止（報名截止後將寄送會議通知）

會議聯絡Email：gcstudies@gate.sinica.edu.tw

演講摘要：

A reinterpretation of global Asian Studies based on generalizable notions of hybridity, interconnected flows, and horizontality evokes the principle of nested, generative feedback functions, which increasingly undergird finance capital, machine learning, and data governance today. A diagram of loops easily conjures the recursive fantasy driving our economic infrastructure, which claims that everything belongs to the same kind of network. In view of this cultural logic of self-generating networks, even our prized notions of scholarly self-reflexivity, and by extension, complicity, may be inadequate. Despite this preliminary cynicism, my talk inhabits different scales of thinking to argue that the crucial difference between a speculative, heuristic loop and an automated, systemic one remains one for the critical humanities to make. 

“Asia in Loops” maps the trajectory of my research beginning from my first book, The Stone and the Wireless: Mediating China, 1896-1906 (Duke UP, 2021). From there, I share my ongoing research that attempts a version of Trans-Asia, which does not reproduce the curves and lines of interconnectedness found in any Belt-and-Road-Initiative-related infographics. Ultimately, “Asia in Loops” raises a very old problem: can culture or critique still assert its autonomy in the face of the recursive principles driving such varying political-technical-commercial assemblages or network forms? And can we do so without worrying excessively about method?