In Asia as Method, Chen Kuan-Hsing calls for a strategy of inter-Asian referencing which “posits the West as bits and fragments that intervene in local social formations in a systematic, but never totalizing, way” (223). While inter-Asian comparative studies are no longer uncommon, attempts to continue discussing how those Western bits and fragments are intervening in Asian societies today have been more fraught. This paper proposes one potential approach to bringing the West back into Asian cultural studies without reaffirming its hegemonic centrality or abandoning inter-Asian referencing: by comparing contemporary adaptations of Western literature and culture in different Asian countries. In this paper, I focus on novels, comics and videogames produced in Singapore, South Korea and Japan, although stories from Graeco-Roman mythology, German fairy tales or Victorian detective fiction are constantly being reinterpreted and reimagined across the Asian continent. These might be straightforward retellings or completely independent narratives, but all involve filtering one or more Western texts through Asian sensibilities and perspectives. Because they reflect the hopes and anxieties of their creators and consumers, such popular cultural adaptations evince whether and how far the project of breaking the West up into fragments has been embraced beyond the academy. Even though many adaptations still propagate or react against an essentialist notion of the West, others now “write through” Western texts as one among many available sources to tell stories that neither ignore the legacy of Euro-American imperialism in Asia completely nor adopt it as their sole or dominant premise.

Authors:
Leslie Wong, King's College London, United Kingdom

About the Presenter(s)
Leslie Wong is a final-year doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at King’s College London who works on adaptations of the “Western” canon in contemporary Asian novels, comics and video games. He was born and raised in Singapore.

Additional website of interest
https://x.com/wongznleslie

See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule

Bookmark