"Struggling To Remember: Memory, Representation, And Contention" - By CWP Alum Ja-Ian Chong

Memory is a powerful and deeply human quality that is as important for individuals as much the communities from which they come. They may be the representation of some past, but can also shape perspectives, move individuals and communities to action. What communities, societies, private entities, and states choose to emphasize and remember, how they do so can become consequential as a result. Such conditions can make memory and memorialization contentious, both physically and figuratively. Such considerations and contestations permeate culture as well as efforts at cultural production and promotion by state as well as private entities. A central locus in this volume is this tension and competition over remembering and cultural representation. Each contribution to The Culture of Memory takes pains to explore an aspect of this dynamic in detail.  Bringing the different contributions in this volume together are also connections to trauma brought on by acts of state violence in East Asia from before World War II through the Cold War. These events ground discussions in the various chapters together both temporally and geographically. Contributors underscore the fact that perpetrators of state violence in these accounts, as well as those complicit in their unfolding, are not some faceless outsider or external entity. They instead involve the familiar. Such uncomfortable realities make looking back and then recounting more uncomfortable and difficult, but also necessary if there is to be hope for accommodation, if not reconciliation. This perhaps explains the continuing unease over the retrieval and representation of events that occurred decades ago.

https://www.routledge.com/Cultures-of-Memory-in-Asia-Dynamics-and-Forms-of-Memorialization/Wu/p/book/9781032150406

The focus of my teaching and research is on international relations, especially IR theory, security, Chinese foreign policy, and international relations in the Asia-Pacific. Of particular interest to me are issues that stand at the nexus of international and domestic politics, such as influences on nationalism and the consequences of major power competition on the domestic politics of third countries. I also enjoy looking at historical material in my research. In addition to my academic background, I have experience working in think-tanks both in Singapore and in the United States. As such, I also look at the relationship between political science theory and policy, and believe the two can inform each other.

I am author of External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation–China, Indonesia, Thailand, 1893-1952 (Cambridge, 2012), which received the 2013 Best Book Award from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

Photo Credit: https://pixabay.com/users/jarmoluk-143740/